Small Town News

Downtown Rehoboth Beach gains 126 new trees

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Project will continue in fall

The population of Rehoboth Beach grew last week, and the new residents figure to be in the city for a long, long time.

The city and the Delaware Forest Service have joined forces to plant 126 new trees in public lands throughout the city. The city and state will team up again in the fall for Phase 2 of the project - planting 38 more trees, bringing the total to 164.

Bryan Hall of the Office of State Planning Coordination, who has served as the state liaison on the project, said digging began April 13 and the project was finished two days later, April 15.

Hall said the new trees were planted at Lake Gerar Park, The Grove park, along Rehoboth Avenue, at the WW Post on State Road, on Scarborough Avenue, Bayard Avenue, in front of the building and licensing office at 306 Rehoboth Ave. and finally, at Rehoboth Elementary School, where select classes of kindergarteners got to plant eight trees near Silver Lake. Members of the Delaware Forest Service, as well as Hall, Rehoboth building inspector Terri Sullivan and city arborist Walter Onizuk, helped the excited youngsters plant the trees.

"We're very pleased with the work that's been done. We look forward to coordinating Phase 2 in the fall of the year, in which we will be reaching out to various street tree locations to replace memorial trees that have been lost over the years, as well as new locations where we can install street trees throughout the city," Hall said.

Hall said the locations for the trees were identified through a comprehensive tree inventory that assessed the health and condition of all the city's public trees. The inventory also identified potential planting locations. "The city felt they should focus in on publicly owned spaces, particularly the parks, knowing they had the potential to provide a lot of new plantings roughout the city in those locations," he said. Hall said the bulk of the trees are native species, although there are some nonnative species. He said this was keeping in the general philosophy of the right tree for the right location. Among the new trees planted are oaks, maples, redbuds, cherry trees, serviceberries and specialty trees, such as the American elm, which is being reintroduced in the city. The Rehoboth Elementary students planted two sweet bay magnolias, two redbuds, two river birches and two zelkovas. Hall said the sweet bay magnolias and redbuds could reach as high as 25 to 40 feet in height, the zelkovas and river birches could eventually grow as high as 50 to 75 feet. "The idea is to introduce a little bit of canopy mixture to this site, which is predominately older, mature oaks. We wanted to give the kids some color, as well as reintroduce some trees to the site in the event some of these larger trees do have to come down," Hall said. Potentially one of the biggest trees, in terms of height, is the American elm planted in front of building and licensing, which Hall said, with ideal growing conditions could grow up to 75 to 100 feet in height. The state champion elm in Dover is 135 feet tall. Hall said Phase 2 would start after Labor Day and take three to five days to complete. Davey Tree of Ohio is the contractor on the $28,000 project. The money for the trees came from a grant by the Delaware Forest Service's Community Forestry Program. The city's building and licensing department is overseeing the project. "We've tried to give them a lot of variety and a lot of species composition to promote the habitat we've talked about, but also proved beauty in certain locations," Hall said. THE CITY AND DELAWARE FOREST SERVICE HAVE JOINED FORCES TO PLANT 126 NEW TREES IN PUBLIC LANDS THROUGHOUT REHOBOTH.





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