City of Wauwatosa Urban Forest 🌳

đź“Ť 25,000+ Trees - With Canopy Covering 297.4 Acres


Why is our Urban Forest Important?

Wauwatosa has over 25,000 city trees, typically trees that are in medians or in the grassy area between sidewalks and the street.

Trees provide shade for our houses and buildings, improve our air quality, and is an important tool for keeping stormwater out of our rivers and lakes. Other benefits include noise control, traffic control, and glare and reflection control.

Our Tosa trees contribute lots of value to our urban forest:

  • Our urban forest is valued at $61.6 million.
  • Every year, our trees take 331 tons of carbon out the atmosphere through a process called carbon sequestration.
  • Our trees produce 888 tons of oxygen per year
  • Trees also help avoid stormwater runoff. Annually, Wauwatosa trees keep 2.2 million gallons of stormwater from going into our rivers and lakes.
  • Wauwatosa has 116 species, and the goal is to continue diversifying our urban forest.

If you’re interested in learning more, view  iTree’s software  to see how we calculate some of these numbers.

What do our Arborists do?

Our Team of Arborists Trim Thousands of Trees Every Year

Our staff meticulously cares for our 25,000+ trees, making us proud to be a  Tree City USA . We think trees significantly enhance the beauty of our environment and raise our quality of life.

In a typical year, our team:

  • removes dead trees
  • plants new trees
  • prunes trees
  • treat trees for diseases and pests

Public Tree Applications

Our Team Uses a Variety of Techniques and Equipment

Outside of tree responsibilities, we manage the city's green spaces by cutting and fertilizing grass, plant annual flowers at Hart Park, City Hall, perennial beds throughout the city, and manage other garden areas. We also are snow plow drivers!

When there's a significant storm, we're on the front line of cleaning up damage to city trees.

Every Year Our Team Plants Hundred of Trees Around The City


Our Tree Dashboard

Below is our Wauwatosa tree dashboard. When you click into the map, you can navigate to any Wauwatosa street and start to see city trees populate on the map. 

If you start to dig into the data, you might notice some trends:

  • Four species of trees make up roughly two thirds of our forest – which is not a healthy balance for our ecosystem. We have over 116 species of trees and the goal is to increase our tree diversity, so Wauwatosa’s forest continues to thrive. By choosing a diverse palate of trees, we minimize risks of pests or diseases impacting our urban forest.
  • You’ll also be able to see the ecological benefits that each tree contributes. Trees contribute to their environment by providing oxygen, improving air and water quality, preserving soil, and supporting wildlife. Wauwatosa is a  Tree City  which means that we have met certain criteria that shows our commitment to our forest management.
  • We often get questions about when trees were last treated or pruned, and this tool will have those answers for you. Click on any individual tree to see this data. 

Maple, Linden, Honey Locust, and Ash trees make up roughly two thirds of our urban forest - which isn't a healthy balance for our ecosystem. We're actively planting different species to make sure our forest thrives.

Wauwatosa Tree Inventory

Welcome to our Virtual Tree Tour

We gathered photos of some of the tree species we are using to increase the diversity of our urban forest.

“Emerald Spire Crabapple.” Jeffries Nurseries, Jeffries Nurseries Ltd., 2012, http://jeffriesnurseries.com/emeraldspire.pdf. 

“Ginkgo.” Ginkgo Tree on the Tree Guide at Arborday.org, Arbor Day Foundation, n.d., https://www.arborday.org/trees/treeguide/TreeDetail.cfm?ItemID=1092. 

“Plant and Protect: Search Trees and Plants.” The Morton Arboretum | The Champion of Trees, 17 May 2021, https://mortonarb.org/plant-and-protect/trees-and-plants. 

“Trees for 2050: Urban Forest Adaptive Planting List.” Chicago Botanic Garden, 2013, https://www.chicagobotanic.org/plantinfo/tree_alternatives/.