The county arborist has inspected our street tree requests. We will receive 31 new street trees sometime between late fall of this year and spring of 2023. Thirteen of those will be shade trees. You’ll see pink splashes painted on curbs around the neighborhood where the trees will go.

Most species requested were natives. This means we will increase the number of host plants for certain native moths and butterflies, and provide a more welcoming environment for our native birds, who eat the caterpillars of those moths and butterflies, as well as the nuts, nutlets, catkins, seeds, berries, and drupes that the trees provide. The native species will be planted by Casey Trees in conjunction with the county using a grant from the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection’s Water Quality Protection Fund, administered through the Chesapeake Bay Trust. The non-natives will be funded and planted in the usual manner by the Montgomery County Department of Transportation tree division.

Most people get their first choice of species. First choices for shade trees this year included blackgums, American elm, a couple of kinds of oaks, American linden (basswood), Lacebark elm, and an American sycamore. First choices for minor trees included crabapples, sweetbay magnolias, redbuds, chokecherries, hophornbeams, a serviceberry, and one or two ornamental (Japanese) cherries.

The county will give us one ornamental native shade tree in the pocket park at Lanier Dr and 3^rd Ave, five feet behind the Lanier Dr guardrail. As this is not a priority location, they will use a tree freed up by cancellations, but have tentatively scheduled a blackgum. If that isn’t available, they will pick a native with either flowers or attractive fall foliage. This plan was approved by the neighborhood Community Design committee.

Casey Trees has not yet removed the stakes and straps on the trees they planted in spring 2021 for reasons related to the pilot nature of the project that year. However they will remove them when they take the stakes and straps for trees they planted this past spring.

Finally, some of our Yellowwood street trees bloomed for this first time this year. This is a relatively rare tree and I had never seen it in its full glory. The photo above is a closeup of one on Elkhart St.

— Phyllida Paterson, Tree Committee