Paloma Doyle ’26 is on a mission to plant 100 trees in New London

Paloma Doyle ’26 is determined to bring urban forestry justice to Connecticut College’s host city. The botany major, art minor and scholar in the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment is on a mission to increase the tree canopy in the city with 100 new plantings in the next two years. 

“Trees shade, beautify and benefit our public urban spaces and are directly linked to a variety of environmental benefits, including reduced summer heat, improved air quality, stormwater absorption, habitat creation and general community well-being,” Doyle said.

“New London has one of the lowest tree canopy densities in the state. And while most of New London could benefit from more canopy, the areas with the least canopy coverage correspond to communities of color and of low socioeconomic status, demonstrating the trend between urban forestry and environmental justice in which the benefits of urban canopy are not equally experienced.”

Last summer, Doyle and her classmate Zach Wheat ’26 served as urban forestry interns for New London Trees, a six-year-old nonprofit dedicated to increasing the city’s tree population through community planting and care, education and advocacy. To prepare for the internship, they took a course on vector-based geographic information systems, a mapping software they then used to update and expand a municipal tree inventory and create an interactive map. Their work documented 2,046 trees on public and private lands in the city, including 107 that had been planted by New London Trees since 2018. However, they also documented the removal of more than 160 trees in the same timeframe.

“Tree inventories provide the foundation for better community forest planning and management,” Doyle said. “New London has a long way to go to break even.”

Following her internship, Doyle joined the board of New London Trees, which recently secured a two-year, $115,300 grant from the USDA Forest Service and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to plant the targeted 100 trees and expand community programming, including offering more internship opportunities. Doyle is serving as the tree inventory liaison; Maggie Redfern, director of the Arboretum, serves as board president.

“Part of my role will be helping to identify planting locations, which can be challenging in the highly paved environment of New London,” said Doyle, who added that the group often targets front yards for planting, which increases the overall canopy and has the additional benefit of involving homeowners or tenants who can help care for and establish the trees in their early years.

“The two-year timeline of the grant lines up perfectly with the rest of my time at Conn, so I’ll get to see the whole thing through,” she added.  

It was Doyle’s interest in trees that brought her to Conn in the first place. A native of Austin, Texas, Doyle conducted fieldwork as a high school student comparing the difference in tree canopy coverage in historically redlined neighborhoods vs. non-redlined areas.

“It was clear to me that these disparities stemmed from inequalities in our systems, and that began my fight for environmental justice through the lens of urban forestry,” she said.

Doyle chose Conn for its storied, stand-alone botany program and Arboretum campus, and was invited to join the Science Leaders program. “I knew this combination would be perfect for me to study trees and all things plant-related,” she said.

She quickly joined the Arboretum team as a landscape assistant under Redfern, who she says she is proud to call her mentor. On campus, Doyle is also the chair of the Botany Student Advisory Board, a Sprout Garden manager and a trip leader through the Outdoor Adventures program. In January, her extraordinary commitment to trees and tree care was recognized with a $2,000 Arborist Scholarship from the Connecticut Tree Protective Association.

This summer, Doyle will serve as an internship coordinator for New London Trees, overseeing two Conn interns, two college-aged interns from the New London area, and several local high school students.

“I will be able to teach them all that I learned last summer, but also share with them my passion for urban forestry,” she said.