Hello St. Clair Park community!

I wanted to share an update with you after last summer’s efforts to work with the St. Paul forestry department to mitigate the loss of many of the ash trees in the park due to emerald ash borer.  

The forestry department held a public meeting last summer which I and several of you attended. We pushed hard for the city to consider climate resilience, biodiversity, and the importance of the park’s shade to our local community. Due to these efforts, the city did in fact change their plan and allowed 10 of the healthiest ash trees to remain, as well as providing them with much needed trimming.  To replace the lost trees, our very supportive St. Paul Ward 2 councilmember, Rebecca Noecker, secured grant funding to plant larger stock (which should be more resilient and re-establish shade more quickly) and the city agreed to grind the stumps of the old trees and replace them on an accelerated schedule to help our shade regrow as quickly as possible.  

In addition, the city headed our calls for increased diversity (to hopefully avoid a situation like this in the future) and planted at least TEN different species of trees in the park (that’s just my count and I’m sure I missed one or two!).  This is a huge benefit to our park’s landscape.

If you’ve been to the park in the past couple of weeks, you’ve hopefully seen the new trees. If you haven’t been out there, I encourage you to visit and take in the sight of this investment in our community.  I know I will enjoy watching these trees grow over the years and provide the many services we all value; shade, wildlife habitat, storm water retention, and beauty, among others, and I hope you will too.

I was also incredibly pleased to see that many other replacement boulevard trees were planted in the surrounding neighborhood at this time, again with several tree species and of larger stock. This is great progress for our neighbors who had lost their boulevard trees in recent years and our West Seventh neighborhood.  

I must say I am impressed with this outcome.  One year ago, when many of us noticed the green stripes on all the ashes, it looked like our park might be clear cut and wouldn’t get replanted for at least a year or two. We also worried the replacements might be like many of the small, barely surviving replacement trees we’ve seen around the neighborhood and not be diverse enough to withstand the increased climate and pest challenges we see today.  Thanks to all our persistence and loud voices, we’ve made a difference in the future of this important community space.  If you have a spare moment, I encourage you to reach out to our councilmember, Rebecca Noecker at ward2@ci.stpaul.mn.us, and the St. Paul forestry department at forestry@ci.stpaul.mn.us, to thank them for these efforts.

Thank you,

Naomi