When volunteers meet on Thornhill Road at 9 a.m. on Saturday, October 24, to plant trees at Old Orchard, who paid for those trees? Most likely a property owner somewhere else in Cherry Hill who took a tree down and paid a fee instead of planting a new one. Since 2022, the township has steered that money into a fund that can only be spent on planting trees. Fall 2026 is the third planting season in a row that has sent volunteers back to the same small group of neighborhood open spaces.

Taken together, the plantings make up one slow canopy project, paid for by removals and worked one open space at a time.

The money starts with a tree coming down somewhere else

Cherry Hill's tree chapter was adopted as Ordinance 2022-1 on June 15, 2022, and the full text is posted on eCode360. It generally covers trees with a trunk at least 5 inches in diameter at breast height. "Removal" includes cutting a tree down or trimming off more than 30 percent of it.

The money comes from the replacement schedule. For each regulated tree that has to be replaced, the applicant either plants a new tree or pays into the Tree Fund: $175 per tree for residential applicants and $300 per tree for commercial applicants. The payment is due before the permit is issued. Dead, invasive and imminent-threat trees are exempt. When the township announced the ordinance in 2022, it described a homeowner allowance of up to three removals a year "without any replacement requirement."

The ordinance also limits how the fund can be spent. Money in the Tree Fund can go only to tree-planting projects in Cherry Hill, including buying, distributing and planting trees. In April 2026, South Jersey Media reported that the fund collects money when businesses pay to remove trees from their properties. That money pays for the township's resident tree giveaway and for the trees planted by public works crews and volunteers.

The township has not published a fund balance, and the event pages for this fall don't link these five plantings to a specific appropriation. They are part of the same volunteer series that South Jersey Media describes the fund paying for.

Five sites, and most of them have been planted before

Mayor Dave Fleisher announced the program, "Branching Out: Growing a Greener Cherry Hill," on March 6, 2025. The Sun reported a goal of more than 500 trees across public spaces and residential properties. The township analyzed its canopy and picked 13 public spaces for planting. The Sun named eight of them: Chapel Avenue Park, Lewis Memorial Park, the Point of Woods neighborhood, Erlton South Park, the DeCous Sports Complex, Gilmour Park, the Brookfield neighborhood and the Municipal Building.

The volunteer series run with the Cherry Hill Environmental Board, known as CHEB, has worked a narrower set of open spaces since then. Line the township calendars up season by season and the same sites keep coming back.

Old Orchard is on the schedule for the third season running. Chestnut Terrace has its second November 15 planting in two years. Surrey Place East gets its second planting since April. Ridings of Fox Run, at the corner of Red Oak Drive and SE Gate Drive, is the only site in this fall's series with no earlier volunteer planting in the 2025 or spring 2026 listings.

Why the township keeps planting where the canopy is thin

The township has explained how it picks sites. Megan Brown, Cherry Hill's deputy chief of staff, described the approach to South Jersey Media in April:

"We have an understanding … of what our tree canopy looks like and where we have more trees versus where we have less trees. So we just kind of strategically plant in areas where we have less trees around the community, so we're touching all the different areas."

The same article gave the program's scale. The township had planted about 380 trees since fall 2024, with 365 more planned for spring 2026, for a total of roughly 750. The spring plan included 200 trees for the resident giveaway, 45 to be planted by public works and about 120 by volunteers. The giveaway doubled from 100 trees in 2025. The 2026 species were common serviceberry, eastern redbud, flowering dogwood and swamp white oak.

The survival figure explains why going back to the same ground makes sense. The township doesn't track giveaway trees once residents take them home. It does follow up on the trees planted by public works and volunteers, and fewer than 10 of those had died as of April. Brown credited the species chosen and the care after planting. Public works waters its trees, and volunteers water the ones they plant. A site that gets a season of watering and then another planting builds up over time.

No tree count or species list has been published for fall 2026, and the township hasn't posted a final total for spring. The 750 figure from April is a plan, not a confirmed count.

Signing up for a shift

Registration runs through the township's Fall 2026 Community Tree Plantings page. You can sign in with an account or check out as a guest. Here are the meeting points and times from the township calendar:

1. Old Orchard: Saturday, Oct. 24, 9 a.m., Thornhill Road off Old Orchard
2. Ridings of Fox Run: Sunday, Oct. 25, 1 p.m., corner of Red Oak Drive and SE Gate Drive
3. Surrey Place East Open Space: Sunday, Nov. 1, 9 a.m., access between 309 and 321 Longstone Drive
4. Bunker Hill White Trail: Saturday, Nov. 14, 9 a.m., Bobwhite Drive at Blue Jay Lane
5. Chestnut Terrace Open Space: Sunday, Nov. 15, 9 a.m., 1 Chestnut Terrace

The township recommends volunteers be 12 or older. Bring a pointed shovel and water, and a wheelbarrow if you can transport one. Plan on up to three hours. When the registration page was checked, the sessions had caps of 20, 15, 25, 40 and 40 people, in the order listed above. Ridings of Fox Run had the smallest cap. The page updates live, so open spots will change.

Last fall's listing estimated one to two hours per session. This year's says up to three.

The Bunker Hill session comes with a trail walk

The November 14 planting is the one that doubles as a walk. The township's Bunker Hill Trails page describes the preserve as a mix of woodland, wetland and meadow, with six easy trails. Here are their lengths: yellow 0.30 mile, blue 0.08 mile, green 0.26 mile, red 0.5 mile, purple 0.25 mile and white 0.2 mile. The main trailhead is at Bobwhite Drive and Blue Jay Lane, the same spot listed as the meeting point.

Last November, volunteers worked the Green and White trails together. This year the listing names only the White Trail. Since the green trail was planted last fall, anyone at the November 14 session can walk the 0.26-mile green trail and see how a year-old planting has done. Then it's half a mile on the red trail, the longest at Bunker Hill.

The fee figures and permit rules above summarize Cherry Hill's ordinance as general information. They are not legal advice. Anyone planning to remove a tree should check the current code and their own situation with the township before acting.

If you're weighing what an established yard and its trees mean for your property's long-term value, Joey Malcarney of Greenside Living is glad to talk it through. Schedule a private consultation.