Green Cambridge

Green Cambridge is a place-based nonprofit working to make Cambridge more sustainable and to protect the environment for everyone’s health and safety. Treating the city’s 4,000 acres as a classroom, it connects residents to urban trees, native habitats, urban agriculture and wildlife, with equity and environmental justice at the center of the work. Its core programs pay local teens to do hands-on ecology work while offering environmental education for all ages.

Canopy Crew, one of its two youth programs, is a paid eight-month urban forestry and green careers program for Cambridge high school students aged 16 to 18. Crew members plant trees on private property, where most of the city’s canopy loss has occurred, prioritizing low-canopy environmental justice neighborhoods. The program grew out of the city’s 2019 Urban Forest Master Plan, which Green Cambridge advocated for, and has planted more than 275 trees on over 150 properties.

What to Know

• The second youth program, Restore Corps, takes teen applicants alongside Canopy Crew.
• Volunteers help steward the Alewife Brook Reservation, the city’s only urban wild.
• Cambridge property owners can sign up to receive a tree planted by Canopy Crew.
• Canopy Crew plants up to 100 trees each year.
• The organization is a 501(c)(3) that also advocates for responsible land and resource use in the city.