NEWS

First of 100,000

Towering cathedral oak planted in Cove; city aims for 99,999 more plantings by 2025

KATIE LANDECK
klandeck@pcnh.com

PANAMA CITY — The first of what the city hopes ultimately will be 100,000 trees was rooted behind the “Welcome to the Cove” sign Thursday as a symbol of what’s to come.

“This is a real statement,” said City Manager Mark McQueen. “We are rising up, bigger, better and stronger.”

When the first bands of Hurricane Michael reached the Cove on Oct. 10, the canopy that had defined the neighborhood for decades immediately started to fall. By the end, many found their streets unrecognizable.

“I lost every single tree in my yard,” said Lawnscapes Inc. President Joe Littleton. He estimated that about 50 percent of the trees are left. “We’ve got to plant some trees.”

As a lifelong resident of the Cove, Littleton offered to donate the first one. And not just any tree, but a 15-year-old, 30-foot cathedral live oak — the largest you can buy without needing a crane to plant it — to be given back to an area that loved its trees so dearly.

“Is that a pretty tree or what?” Mayor Greg Brudnicki said, standing in front of it for the first time. “It’s just the right shape.”

It’s the first of four trees Littleton plans to donate, one for each ward. The public plantings are planned to take place during the next few months and likely will be at the Spring Avenue Walking Park, Oaks by the Bay Park, and behind the Welcome to Glenwood sign at 15th Street.

But the four trees also are meant to be symbolic of a much larger effort — 100,000 trees by 2025.

“When you look at the storm debris, the lion’s share is our beautiful trees,” said Brudnicki. “That’s one of the things we have to restore as soon as possible.”

It’s an impressive goal, Pete Smith, the arborist and community forest program lead for the National Arbor Day Foundation, said when he heard about it.

“That’s encouraging to hear that they are doing it so soon after the storm,” Smith said. “We always encourage cities to have goals like this, and 100,000 trees for a city the size of Panama City, we applaud that kind of effort.”

A goal of that scale, he said, is “doable, but an all-hands-on-deck situation” that will require effort not just from government, but also from residents willing to plant some trees in their yards.

But the payoffs — when the right tree is planted in the right location — are great, Smith said.

“Some research shows we can’t live without it,” he said. “As long as people have created settlements, that have planted trees.”

He added trees help with stormwater savings, pollution removal and property values.

City leaders do not expect getting that buy-in to be a problem, noting how attached people always have been to the urban forest.

“They’re a symbol of this area,” said Commissioner Jenna Haligas. “Even the Cove stickers have oak trees on them. A lot of people thought this area is never going to be the same, this area is never going to look the same.

“I see this tree,” she said, gesturing to the newly planted oak, “as a symbol of what we had and lost, but also what we can have. We are moving forward.”

The city is looking into grants and programs that will help bring more trees into the area.

“We plan to follow through with this,” said Brudnicki. “There are a lot of programs and grants we plan to exhaust. This is the start, and it’s a great start.”

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