Phoenix broke several heat records last year. Now Grant Park, which has inequitable tree cover, is seeing a tree planting drive that promises some respite from 100F temperatures

It was a relatively cool spring day in Phoenix, Arizona, as a tree planting crew dug large holes in one of the desert city’s hottest and least shaded neighborhoods.

Still, it was sweaty backbreaking work as they carefully positioned, watered and staked a 10-ft tall Blue palo verde and Chilean mesquite in opposite corners of resident Ana Cordoba’s dusty unshaded backyard.

“If I ever retire, I’d like to be able to spend more time outside. The weather is changing, so I am really happy to get these trees. We need more shade,” said Cordoba, 75, a legal secretary, whose family has lived in Grant Park for more than a century.

Over the course of three days in early April, arborists planted 40 or so desert adapted trees in Grant Park, as part of the city’s equity-driven heat mitigation plan to create a shadier, more livable environment amid rising temperatures and hundreds of heat related deaths.