Palisades Parkway Promise
The Problem Nobody Planned For
When the Palisades fire tore through our community in January 2025, over 6,800 homes and buildings burned to the ground. Families fled. Streets emptied. And in the silence that followed, something else began to die—quietly, slowly, and almost entirely unnoticed...
The Trees
Thousands of them, lining the parkways from Marquez to Chautauqua and beyond—the strips of land between the sidewalk and the street that give the Palisades its canopy, its character, its shade.
These aren’t just trees. They’re the ones your kids climbed. The ones your dog stopped at every morning. The ones that made this place feel like home.
The city controls parkways, but homeowners must legally maintain them. With residents displaced and homes gone, no one is left to water them.
So the trees just… wait. And without water, they die—or weaken until disease finishes the job. We’re talking about thousands of trees.
What’s Already Working
In the fall of 2024, a group of committed Palisadians refused to let that happen: Tracey Price, Cindy Kirven, and Jimmy Dunne, along with Valeria Serna and Marilyn Wexler. Through the Palisades Forestry Committee, they raised donations of $75,000 from Pacific Palisades Community Council and $65,600 from the CD11 Foundation, for which we are so grateful.
They engaged Traci and David Price of American Growers, a trusted local company with the equipment, expertise, and deep roots in this community, to do the job right. Since October 2025, their water truck, with some help from Valeria Serna’s water truck, has been rolling through the streets of the Palisades, watering parkway trees from Marquez Ave. to Chautauqua Blvd. The two-crew watering team ensures trees get effective deep watering every few weeks.
The results have been remarkable. Trees that were showing severe stress are stabilizing. Canopy that seemed lost is coming back. Block by block, the Palisades is holding on to something irreplaceable. The UCLA/Luskin Center assessed surviving street trees in April 2026 and found 400 remaining.
Bottom line facts:
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It’s a 2½-year initiative to water 400+ parkway trees.
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If we hadn’t been watering for the past months and didn’t continue watering for the next 2 years, at least 300 more could die or become diseased.
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Because funding for the Palisades Parkway Promise has been exhausted, parkways throughout the Palisades have not been watered since June 15, 2026.
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With $20,000, we can resume watering immediately and continue for one month. To provide watering through December 1, we need to raise $60,000 total.
This initiative preserves the legacy of our existing urban tree canopy, keeping our biodiverse ecosystem intact and thriving. The beauty of nature’s architecture grounds and surrounds our homes.
What We Need Now
To continue this work for the next 2½ years—long enough for displaced homeowners to return and resume caring for their own parkways—we need to raise $440,000 total.
$20,000
One month for hot September, 2026
$60,000 Total
September, October, and November, 2026
$440,000 Total
September, 2026 through January, 2029
The Spirit Behind It
This initiative is Palisadians taking care of Palisadians. No bureaucracy. No red tape. Just neighbors who love this place, making sure that when people come home, the streets they return to still feel like the streets they left.
Palisades Forestry Committee is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that allocates 100% of Water Truck donations to watering services.
The promise in our name: "The Palisades Parkway Promise is that we’ll keep the trees alive until Palisadians are home."
This summer, that spirit is being brought to life through Capt’ Splash—a community campaign designed to create joy, awareness, and engagement around this cause, with events and activities for kids and families across the Palisades.
Because a community that’s healing deserves to also laugh.
July 4, 2026 Palisades Parade, with Capt’n Splash, his pirate crew, walking trees, and his water truck “float”. This truck waters surviving street trees, and maybe squirts a kid.