Second of two parts
Re “No Shortage of Urban Forest Ideas – Now, How Do They Work?”
With the next community meeting on creating an Urban Forest 2½ weeks off, Thursday, Feb. 5, Charles Herbertson said that a plan may be drawn where single blocks will contain identical trees – but one block at a time is likelier than — cloaking a whole neighborhood in one brand.
“We won’t have a whole area where the trees are the same,” said the Public Works director. “Diversity is important from the standpoint of, if there should be a disease, we don’t want to have to wipe out a whole area of trees.”
The first two in a series of community gatherings have focused on residential neighborhoods while Feb. 5 will be devoted to trees in commercial districts.
“We heard about residents’ concerns about tree-root damage to sidewalks to trees getting into sewer lines,” Mr. Herbertson said. “Some people thought we were trimming trees too aggressively, some said we were not trimming them often enough. The comments seemed to depend on what part of the city they were talking about.”
Perhaps the most cheering news for Mr. Herbertson was that turnout was strong, “and a lot of people expressed interest in the Urban Forest project. They said they want to be involved. People not only made thoughtful suggestions but gave ideas that were helpful to our process.”
