Peaks and Pints hosts a Tree-mendous Tacoma Beer Week Night

Since Tacoma Tree Foundation partners with the Community Tree Program, they provide Language Ambassadors rooted in diverse communities who support tree recipients in Korean, Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian. Photo courtesy of Tacoma Tree Foundation

Peaks and Pints hosts a Tree-mendous Tacoma Beer Week Night

Trees can have many meanings to people, including a connection to nature, a sense of hope, and a reminder to slow down. Trees can also symbolize strength, growth, and the interconnectedness of all things. Their roots are the first thing that emerges from a seed. And for that tree to grow, strengthen, mature, and thrive, those roots must be strong. The Tacoma Tree Foundation put down roots in 2018, working to bring trees and other plants to the areas with the most social and environmental impact. The non-profit organization’s focus is where the need for trees, greening, community health, and human well-being is the greatest. Peaks & Pints will host a fundraiser during Tacoma Beer Week 2025 to help keep the Tacoma Tree Foundation’s roots strong. On Tuesday, March 4, the entire Tacoma Tree Foundation will be at Peaks & Pints with trees, pine cone games, and their plans to bring more memorable tree moments for Tacoma.

Trees can form memories

Some of Peaks & Pints’ most visceral, sensory, early memories are of trees. While attending Oakbrook Elementary in Lakewood, our cabin counselor invited us to play a game on our school-forced camping week at Millersylvania State Park. He took us into a field, blindfolded us, and introduced us to a tree we would learn by touch. He then brought us back to the field, restored our sight, and let us loose to find our tree. For the rest of the week, we smiled each time we saw “our” tree and brought home a sketchbook filled with its portraits.

Growing up did do much for our love of nature, from lounging on the cedar just off our grandparents’ porch to riding by hundreds of oak trees in the Oakbrook neighborhood in Lakewood on our bike to late-to-class sprints past the University of Washington’s Red Square beautiful cherry trees that bloom in the spring. We love trees because they provide essential environmental benefits like clean air, shade, and wildlife habitat while offering aesthetic beauty, a sense of calm, and a connection to nature, acting as the “lungs of the planet” by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.

*Tacoma Tree Foundation Tacoma Mall Green Blocks program*

Trees can do good

The Tacoma Tree Foundation’s focus is where the need for trees, greening, community health, and human well-being is the greatest. In late 2018, the city began the early stages of the Tacoma Mall Greening Project, a roughly $540,000 project encompassing the Tree Foundation’s Tacoma Mall Green Blocks program, leveraged by a grant from the U.S. Forest Service. Based on the City Equity Index, the Tacoma Mall neighborhood is a high-priority neighborhood for tree planting with just 10 percent urban canopy cover. It’s also a regional growth center or an area with high potential for concentrated employment and housing growth.

Tacoma Mall is just one neighborhood as the city and Tacoma Tree Foundation step into new projects through the Community Tree Program, which the Tacoma City Council passed in 2022 to improve equitable, community-focused urban forestry outcomes. Following the budget adoption, the City of Tacoma solicited proposals for a partnership program between the City’s Urban Forestry Program and a local nonprofit. Through a competitive bidding process, the Tacoma Tree Foundation was awarded the contract for the Community Tree Program to build authentic relationships with diverse audiences and develop equitable engagement strategies that will allow them to reach, involve, and engage underrepresented and overburdened communities. Due to development patterns in the region, our beautiful trees are concentrated in parks, steep slopes, and wealthier neighborhoods. Many parts of the city lack shade, clean air, and public green space. This isn’t fair—and it’s an urgent environmental justice issue in our community.

*Loowit Brewing Silent Trees IPA Brew Day: co-owner and Head Brewer Landon Smith, left, with Team Peaks Matthew Usher, Mitchell Lovett, Erin Miller, and Pappi Swarner.*

Trees can benefit from beer

Peaks & Pints brewed their eighth house IPA at Loowit Brewing in downtown Vancouver. Since the brewery is named after Mount St. Helens and its eruption silenced many trees, they called the beer Silent Trees IPA and have partnered with the Tacoma Tree Foundation, once again, to tell the stories of their favorite trees. As part of Tacoma Beer Week, Peaks will host a fundraiser for Tacoma Tree Foundation with Loowit Brewing in the house. It will be a Tree-mendous night with tree education, tree games, and piney goodness to support community greening efforts in the Greater Tacoma area, Pierce County, and the watersheds of Puget Sound. Executive Director Lowell Wyse will briefly discuss their work while everyone drinks Loowit beer. Board President Luke Vannice will briefly talk about the challenges Tacoma is facing and what they’re doing about it. Loowit Head Brewer and co-owner Landon Smith will discuss his brewery and the beers on tap. Peaks & Pints co-owner Pappi Swarner will discuss the current Silent Trees Series. The craft beer bar has partnered with the Tacoma Tree Foundation, and the night’s draft proceeds benefit the organization.

POURING IT FORWARD: DRINKING FOR TACOMA TREES, 5-8 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, Peaks & Pints, 3816 BN. 26th St., Basecamp Proctor, Tacoma, no cover, donations accepted