Elmwood Receives New Trees for Central Park

By Scott Hilyard (shilyard@pjstar.com)
Journal Star

ELMWOOD —

It took four months, but the plan to replace the trees damaged in Central Park in Elmwood during a violent storm in June and then hastily cut down in the immediate aftermath is about to be carried out.

And after much angst, many meetings and a lot community input, the plan to plant 13 or 14 trees, including the first magnolias in the park on Magnolia Street, was mostly decided by one city councilman and a woman from Hoerr's Nursery.

"It would have been impossible to do everything that people wanted for the park," said Walt Avery, the councilman who is chairman of the city's parks department. "Our idea was not to overpopulate the park with trees and to plant as many indigenous trees as we could find. I think we have a pretty good plan."

The plan calls for 13 or 14 new trees to be planted to replace the 18 to 20 trees that were cut down. Most of the park's previous 43 trees were planted in the early 1950s after Dutch elm disease stripped the city block bare.

Avery and Marilyn Crain, a landscape designer for Hoerr's who is also a certified horticulturist and arborist, got together over the last couple of months to decide what types of trees will be planted and where in the park they will go. Guiding them was a list of suggestions culled from a meeting in July that attracted about 70 residents to the high school auditorium to discuss the replanting of Central Park.

"We worked with the list, taking into consideration the soil and giving every tree its maximum space and all the room it needed," Crain said.

The trees will include two 12-foot American elms and an accolade elm, a Colorado blue spruce and two different kinds of maple trees. They will be purchased from and planted by Hoerr's. The cost to buy and plant 11 trees yet this fall is about $7,000, Avery said. City Treasurer Harold Jehle said a fund set up for donations to replace the Central Park trees currently has more than $8,000 in it.

"We want to plant high quality and as big a tree in Central Park as we can," Jehle said.

Both Avery and Crain said the city is getting trees from Hoerr's at a deep discount motivated by the company's civic-minded interests. The company is donating one tree to the park and charging about $500 for mature trees that would typically cost between $900 and $1,200, Crain said.

"We decided it was a good idea to donate a good old-fashioned American elm to the city," said Dan Mulch, the marketing director at Hoerr's. "It was the least we could do."

The replanting plan drew praise even from those who were initially critical of the city for moving too fast in the aftermath of the storm and for cutting down trees they thought could have been saved.

Resident Richard Coon was one of those outspoken critics.

"We commented, mainly that the plan looked pretty good," Coon said. "(The city) kept our recommendations in mind as to the tree species recommended and placements look good."

The two magnolias, which will be new to the park, will be planted nearest the Larado Taft "Pioneers" statue. That way, the attractive, flowering trees can be framed in photographs that the park's visitors take of the statue.

Avery said some of the suggestions from city residents weren't practical, including a large flower garden in the corner of the park and establishment of a city tree nursery.

"The problem becomes, who's going to maintain those kinds of things," Avery said.

Scott Hilyard can be reached at 686-3244 or at shilyard@pjstar.com.

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