Mobile Street disappears into the wooded slopes above Hazelwood’s Monongahela Street. (Photo by Kaycee Orwig/ PublicSource)
With increasing recognition that trees affect not only the environment but also mental health, the canopy’s friends target neighborhoods like Hazelwood, Homewood, the Hilltop.
Lisa Johnson grew up on a farm, raising pigs and chickens, in the Hazelwood neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
No doubt that the location of her childhood experience may come as a surprise to many, given that Hazelwood is often associated with development and industry.
Johnson, a 58-year-old retired police officer, still has a home in Hazelwood but spends much of her time living above a funeral home she directs in Homestead. Sometimes she feels disappointed by how the green spaces in Hazelwood have become neglected, overgrown and littered with garbage.
“When we went back up there and everything was so overgrown, it just didn’t look the same anymore,” Johnson said.
But last year Johnson went on a hike hosted by the Hazelwood Initiative on the Hazelwood Greenway.
“It was beautiful because it was taking me back to when I was a kid,” Johnson said. “And that’s all we knew. The woods, nature, different stuff like that. Being a grown woman now … kids just don’t get that anymore.”
She believes being in nature is important for kids like her grandchildren — and studies back that up, saying exposure to nature helps kids become healthier both physically and mentally. But she also knows that initiatives for tree planting and protecting green spaces in the place she grew up have to compete with other forces.
“I think there’s a lot of people wanting to buy that property and build on it, and I think instead of doing something like that, we could have another Frick Park-type thing going on up there,” Johnson said.
In Lisa Johnson’s youth, nature was a big part of growing up in Hazelwood. These family photos include Lisa, her father Charlie Johnson, her sister Rosetta Johnson Griggs and her nephew Michael Strothers. (Courtesy of Lisa Johnson)
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