The Forest Behind the Painted Ladies Is Younger Than It Looks

In 2011, a tree survey counted 166 trees in Alamo Square Park. Since 2016, 283 new trees have been planted there. That's more trees in two planting rounds than the entire hill held when the count was taken. Behind the postcard view of Steiner Street sits a forest that is mostly a decade old or younger, and much of it was bought by the neighbors.

The group doing the buying is the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association. In a September 30, 2026 post, ASNA described leading and funding "a sustained reforestation program" at the park for more than a decade. The same association will close out this October with its Halloween tradition at the Painted Ladies. Both efforts come from the same volunteer group, and the trees explain a lot about why the park looks the way it does today.

A Hill Planted Once in 1900

Many of the park's trees date to around 1900, when roughly 1,500 trees and shrubs went onto the hill. Hoodline's 2016 reporting cited the park's Historic Resource Evaluation for that figure. It also reported that only one campaign had replaced dead and dying trees since then, back in the 1980s.

So for most of a century, the canopy aged largely in a single generation. Trees have natural lifespans. Hoodline reported that many of the 1900-era trees were near the end of theirs, a decline sped up by drought followed by El Niño rains. Many of the younger trees had health or structural problems too.

The Count That Started It

ASNA commissioned and paid for the 2011 assessment by HortScience. The finding was blunt. The canopy was in active decline, and the report recommended a structured, long-term replanting program. Hoodline put it in sharper numbers: 105 of the park's 166 trees were predicted to decline "regardless of management."

The losses came quickly. Between 2010 and 2015, about 60 trees were lost to drought, wind and storms. Measured against the 2011 count, that's more than a third of the park's trees gone in five years. Hoodline ran side-by-side aerial images of the canopy in 2011 and five years later to show the thinning.

How a Neighborhood Group Ended Up Buying Trees

San Francisco Recreation and Park shut the whole park for a renovation that began in May 2016. In Hoodline's coverage, ASNA vice president John Dallas said, "With the park closing, we realized we had this opportunity to look forward to the next 100 years."

Here is how it played out, year by year:

• 2015 to 2016: TS Studio prepared the Alamo Square Forestation Plan pro bono for ASNA and Rec & Park. ASNA launched its Trees for Future Generations campaign and matched community donations up to $50,000. Together with neighborhood donors, the campaign raised more than $100,000. Over the same stretch, more than 20 trees in poor or dangerous condition came down, and Rec & Park paid for the removals.
• 2016, Phase I: With Recreation and Park Commission approval, 147 new trees from more than 20 species went in. The funding included $53,000 for trees, timed to a Rec & Park irrigation project, plus $10,000 for etching and installing donor pavers.
• May 24, 2017: The park reopened after Rec & Park's $5.3 million renovation. According to Streetsblog San Francisco, the work added irrigation upgrades, an ADA-accessible restroom and park-wide landscaping, and was projected to save 2.5 million gallons of water a year.
• 2021 to 2023, Phase II: Another 136 trees went in. Rec & Park funded 58 of them in 2021. ASNA funded 70 in 2022 and 2023 for $7,732, then 8 more in September 2023 for $910.19.

Those Phase II numbers are small. Seventy trees for under $8,000 works out to roughly $110 apiece, and the September 2023 batch came in at about the same per-tree cost. Phase I was planted at a different scale. In its breakdown of the 147, ASNA lists 74 trees planted in 24-inch boxes by a contractor it helped pay for and 63 planted by Rec & Park in 5- and 15-gallon sizes. So some of the 2016 trees went into the ground already sizable, while others started much smaller.

Hoodline also reported that much of ASNA's matching fund came from Big 5 Sporting Goods, a Bay to Breakers sponsor. Donors who gave $1,000 or more could have their names engraved on a park paver. Donors at $5,000 and up were promised a framed drawing by local artist Thomas Duane, who had made detailed studies of the park's trees.

Reading the Park by Zone

The Forestation Plan didn't just call for more trees. It assigned different jobs to different parts of the hill, and it kept key views clear. The species below are what the 2016 plan proposed, as reported by Hoodline. They are not a verified list of what was actually planted, but they show the thinking behind each part of the park.

As Hoodline put it, "as any neighborhood dog owner knows," the wind on the west side comes straight off the ocean. The plan's answer is a ring of new trees around the older Monterey cypress grove at the center. A 2023 San Francisco Chronicle feature on neighborhood tree efforts photographed a visitor's dog resting under one of those cypresses.

The architecture around the park has been studied closely, as our guide to Alamo Square home styles explains. The landscape in the foreground of the famous view is much newer than the houses behind it.

The People Behind Phase III

This was never a one-time donation drive. ASNA says the reforestation program is run entirely within the association. Board member J. Lee Stickles was appointed ASNA Chair of Park Reforestation in September 2023. Stickles is also a landscape architect at TS Studio, the firm that drew the original plan. In the Chronicle piece, Stickles said, "We believe strongly that having nature around you is critical to being in a city."

The next round is set for 2028. ASNA describes Phase III as targeted replacement planting for trees lost to storms and other stresses. Before then, the association plans to update the park's tree inventory and map and draft a replanting strategy for a 2028 community planting effort. "Community planting" means the next trees are expected to go in with neighbors helping, not only contractors and city crews.

October 25 on Steiner Street

The association that buys the trees also throws the park's best-known party. ASNA's Alamo Scare runs Sunday, October 25, from 4 to 6 PM. The association is asking for volunteers to "continue our trick-or-treat the Painted Ladies halloween tradition."

This year, the community project Strange Exchange is hosting a costume swap at the event. You can bring last year's costume, pick out this year's, or drop off candy buckets and Halloween decorations. Strange Exchange is collecting those donations on Sundays in October, 9 AM to 1 PM, at the Divisadero Farmers' Market in the DMV parking lot at 1377 Fell Street.

ASNA's recap of the 2023 edition, which it called the third, described children getting magic wands and meeting costumed residents of the Painted Ladies. ASNA estimated about 500 parents and children came. In 2024, event listings described a free block party with Steiner Street closed to traffic between Hayes and Grove, plus music and dancing. ASNA's 2026 notice gives the date, the time and the costume swap. Check the association's site for this year's street setup before you plan around a closure.

The kids trick-or-treating on the 25th will be steps from a park where 283 trees have gone in since 2016, and where ASNA plans the next community planting for 2028.

At Michelle Pender, we pay attention to who looks after the places around a home, because blocks like Alamo Square's are shaped by those people as much as by their architecture. If you'd like to talk about how the park and the streets around it fit your plans, request a private consultation, and visit our Alamo Square neighborhood page before your next walk up the hill.