Charlotte still merits the title “City of Trees.” But as development downs more of them, city officials and conservationists work to plant seeds of new growth.
WHAT’S THE VALUE of this tree, the one that towers above me? I’m sitting on the lawn of the Johnston YMCA, beneath a willow oak that’s more than 70 years old. The oak, planted when this YMCA served local textile workers, is so big that three adults couldn’t join hands around its trunk. Underneath are enough picnic tables and Adirondack chairs to fit more than 100 people in its shade. The YMCA announced plans in May to sell this property—one of the neighborhood’s last green spaces, often called NoDa’s front porch— and no one knows what’ll happen to this tree.
It’s easy to appraise the worth of expensive things but harder for priceless ones. Like this tree. The nightmare for tree advocates is that a developer will see this willow oak as an impediment to condos or another mixed-use mid-rise. As of July, nearly 1,600 people had signed a petition that pleads with the future developer—whoever it’ll be—to find space for this tree in their plans. The NoDa oak tree is a symbol of a larger problem: How can Charlotte save its dwindling tree canopy during a time of rapid growth? How do we teach the value of a tree when we’re more attuned to the price of a condo?
It’s easy to appraise the worth of expensive things but harder for priceless ones. Like this tree.
A new tree assessment, a joint eort of the City of Charlotte and TreesCharlotte, will be the first in four years. At press time, results were expected in late summer. The last one, which covered 2012 to 2018, showed a loss of a quarter-million trees—the equivalent of losing three football fields’ worth of trees every day. The new assessment will likely show these trends continuing, possibly accelerating. Public and private groups are on a mission to save our trees. New city regulations force developers and residents to consider the importance of a tree before cutting it down. Tree planting efforts give thousands of trees away while they educate recipients about the value of their gift. The future of our canopy may rely on these groups’ ability to do the impossible: put a price tag on a tree.