Summerville Roots for Trees

With funding and support from the South Carolina Forestry Commission, the Town of Summerville started a tree-planting campaign to encourage the community to plant and protect trees. Trees are important because they provide numerous benefits such as shade, beauty, reduced flooding, clean air, clean water, habitat for wildlife, and much more. The Town's goal is a no net loss of tree canopy.

The Town has a new app feature on how to properly plant a tree and how to report where and when the tree was planted. This will help us keep track of how many, what type, and where trees are planted throughout the campaign. For access, click here.

Our area is one of the most desirable places to work and live - in not just the country but the entire world. We welcome those who want to come here but also encourage and ask people to plant back what was cleared in order to make it possible for them to be here. We’ve been a designated Tree City U.S.A. for almost 40 years with a very strict tree ordinance that requires the removal of trees to go through an application process. Just because land is approved for development doesn’t mean that every tree on that land will be removed. There’s a lot of land in the area that are wetlands and undevelopable, and also land that the Town requires to be preserved as parks and/or open space.

The Town's strict tree ordinance labels grand trees as those with a diameter of 16 inches at breast height, which is smaller than the designation of most other jurisdictions in the state. We’re also one of the few to protect ALL trees, no matter the species. This helps us to keep a balance between growth and protecting the natural beauty that we already have.

In October 2020, the Town asked the public to help decide the message by voting for the best possible slogan.