This year’s Earth Day celebration on April 22 was a special one for our community and especially for College Park. The city used the occasion to share its plan for the replacement of trees lost to last August’s storm. The replanting consists of 22 new trees in and around College Park and an additional 17 trees along the boulevards that were in the storm’s path.
Mayor Chris Coleman, Parks & Recreation Director, Bob Bierscheid, and Jeff Blodgett, Foundation board chair were on hand for a special 10 a.m. ceremony open to the public at the corner of Raymond and Carter. Also attending were Ross Jackson, District 12 Community Organizer; Karen Miller, president of the St. Anthony Park Garden Club; and the third grade class from St. Anthony Park Elementary School who shared a special song and poems in honor of the day. Local resident and arborist, Mary Lerman, gave a brief explanation of the landscape design and tree species planned for the area before the planting of the first new trees.
The rest of the plantings, which will begin as soon as the ground has firmed up enough to withstand the weight of the nursery trucks, originally were limited to College Park, but because of a donation by the Keep it Green Fund of the Saint Anthony Park Community Foundation, the additional boulevard trees will also be replaced this spring.
As part of the ceremony, a check for $4,235 from the neighborhood fund was presented to the city to help defray the costs. According to Jon Schumacher of the Foundation, the response to the Foundation’s call for financial help to accelerate the replanting process was generous and immediate. “This is a neighborhood that loves its parks and trees and showed it. Several donors, including the Garden Club, gave substantial contributions. That support will help to extend the city’s resources and that’s good news for other hard hit areas like Como Park.”
The mix of trees to be planted includes burr oaks, Norway spruce, sycamores, locusts, and a new disease resistant elm species. Before the ceremony, the 3rd graders were each given a seedling to pot and take home.
