Bloomington is planting hundreds of trees to maintain a healthy urban forest.
Downtown Bloomington will receive 90 new trees, funded by the Bicentennial Tree Planting Project, which supports tree planting in public spaces.
No one tree is used more than others.
According to Haskell Smith, the city’s urban forester, “We try to keep it very diversified, sometimes it's based on availability (of space).”
Bloomington also will move away from planting maple trees.
Smith explained, “A lot of the trees that are here and we plant already do well enough in there. Maples don’t particularly handle drought pretty well and we have an overabundance of maples in Bloomington.”
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The project also will remove invasive Callery pear trees; the city already has removed 65 this year.
“They’re also a poor street tree, they smell bad, they make a lot of mess on sidewalks and they have failures about every storm or wind we have,” Smith said.
Additionally, Bloomington will receive $100,000 from the USDA Forest Service to help with the Urban Forest Storm Resilience and Access Plan project.
The city has planted 180 to 190 this year and will plant 300 more. For 2024, the city aims to plant 300 to 400.
