Stewarding Shelby Avenue Arboretum: Volunteer Maintenance Event
Nashville Tree Conservation Corps is hosting a volunteer stewardship event on Saturday, September 26, 2026, to do some light maintenance work across the Shelby Avenue Arboretum! Join us to make meaningful contributions to East Nashville’s community arboretum. Below, we’ll provide information on signing up, where we will meet, how interested groups may sponsor the event, and how to support NTCC otherwise for those unable to attend. We look forward to coming together to care for Nashville’s canopy!
Volunteer Day Details
The Shelby Avenue Arboretum Volunteer Day is Saturday, September 26 from 8:00 A.M. to noon! NTCC staff and volunteers will meet at 1400 Shelby Avenue to begin work across the East Nashville neighborhood. Sign up here to participate!
During this maintenance event, we’ll apply mulch around arboretum trees and haul away brush from cuts that one of our board arborists will be making during the day. Many hands make light work, and they help cover a wide area in less time. Join us for our maintenance event to help us care for Shelby Avenue Arboretum’s trees!
A Community Arboretum
Unlike a conventional arboretum, Shelby Avenue is distributed and integrated into the daily landscape of East Nashville. The community arboretum’s intentional plantings, curated species, and ecological diversity are showcased alongside their natural, local processes, such as seasonal changes and wildlife hosting, playing out in the open along streets and sidewalks. The dual purposes of the arboretum are engagement and conservation, providing appealing and functional green space throughout one of Nashville’s busiest corridors.
Learn more about Shelby Avenue Arboretum, its trees, and how to plan a visit at www.shelbyarboretum.org.
Wide-Area Stewardship
The Shelby Avenue Arboretum is one of NTCC’s proudest contributions to Nashville’s urban canopy, and in collaboration with the community, there is daily monitoring of the trees by residents in addition to volunteer maintenance events. By actively caring for the trees in this designated area, we’re helping make sure that they grow into well-shaped, healthy mature specimens that offer a wide range of ecosystem services, such as shade, stormwater management, and wildlife habitat, while creating a beautiful and engaging neighborhood arboretum.
NTCC’s volunteer stewardship of the two-mile reach of Shelby Avenue Arboretum is one of many examples of how various stakeholders in Nashville take responsibility for care across the urban canopy in a distributed way:
Homeowners manage trees on their properties.
Metro Nashville oversees many public trees along streets and in parks.
Environmental nonprofits in Nashville contribute to residential and public plantings, like NTCC’s tree sale and Root Nashville’s 500,000 tree planting goal.
The nature of the urban forest is that trees are spread out across many parcels of land, with many stakeholders and participants often managing just a few trees each, sometimes a single specimen. Larger stands may require more attention, and in the case of parks, street trees, and arboretums, groups organize to take responsibility to oversee the wide-area canopy coverage. Overall, urban forestry is a distributed, collaborative, and ongoing activity that engages many of us in various ways.
Supporting On-The-Ground Environmental Work
NTCC’s commitment to the trees of Shelby Avenue Arboretum is supported by Nashvillians of all kinds. Our hands-on volunteers are appreciated for the time and effort they contribute, while donors and sponsors are likewise essential, as they provide much of the funding that allows us to organize and provide materials for this event and our work in general.
Groups who may be interested in sponsoring this event in part or in full can learn more with our sponsor pamphlet, then contact us at info@nashvilletreeconservationcorps.org.
Individual donations are an important source of funding for us, and we are grateful for the generosity of Nashville residents who support our ability to work hard for the city’s canopy; donations can be made here.
NTCC’s tree sale will be returning in September! Fall and winter are the best times to plant a tree, so now is a good time to start thinking about whether your yard could use any big canopy trees for shade or smaller understory species for ornament or privacy.
Sign up for our email newsletter for regular news and tree care tips, and visit our Linktree for more ways to connect.