If you walk or drive through the Park at Forest Green neighborhood in southern Overland Park, you’re likely to see something pretty unique.
Its streets are lined with mature, healthy trees, which isn’t all that special in a city that boasts of its comprehensive tree canopy. What makes this neighborhood special is that a lot of these trees are ash trees.
Having hundreds of still-thriving ash trees is practically unheard of in a city that’s spent millions of dollars over the past several years removing ash trees from neighborhood streets since the arrival of the emerald ash borer.
The pest, once detected, is certain doom for virtually every ash tree in the area. Emerald ash borers tunnel under a tree’s bark, which interrupts the way water and nutrients flow in the tree, causing it to eventually starve.
That is, unless you give the tree a regular prophylactic insecticide injection right into its stump, like the Park at Forest Green neighborhood has, said Laura Peterson, a city forester.
While some homeowners might have preserved ash trees on an individual basis, she said Park at Forest Green might be the only neighborhood in Overland Park to endeavor to save all of its ash trees.
“I know there were several other neighborhoods that were doing it and then discontinued, and we have taken the ash trees out of those neighborhoods,” Peterson said.
Overland Park used to have thousands of ash trees
At one point, Overland Park had about 10,000 ash trees in its canopy, amounting to roughly a quarter of all of its trees. But since the emerald ash borer was first detected in Overland Park in 2014, the population has been almost entirely wiped out.
In response, Overland Park embarked on a widespread removal effort, targeting dead or dying trees on neighborhood streets around the city with the help of contractors. Homeowners or neighborhoods could keep the ash trees on their streets if they could show documentation of past and ongoing preventative treatments.
Since 2023, the city has spent close to $2.6 million removing more than 6,000 of these trees. Overland Park has budgeted another $3 million to replace them with a variety of other species of trees to encourage more diversity in the canopy going forward, a strategy to protect it against other pests. The majority of the money for both efforts came from federal pandemic relief funds.
The bulk of the street tree removals are expected to wrap up this year, and tree replantings continue, said Bailey Patterson, another city forester, at a recent committee meeting.
Today, just about 600 or so healthy ash trees remain in the whole city, nearly half of which you can find in the Park at Forest Green neighborhood.
Park at Forest Green HOA pays for the ash tree preservation
Keeping the ash trees in the Park at Forest Green neighborhood isn’t a cheap endeavor.
It costs about $16,000 every two years for the whole neighborhood, longtime homeowners association board member Scot Johansen estimates. It’s something they decided to start doing roughly a decade ago.
The HOA covers the cost of the ash tree preservation program with funds raised by regular dues.
Still, Brent Wright, president of the HOA, has “no doubt” that the investment in treating the trees has been worth it.
“If they came in and they just cut down every tree in the neighborhood, it would change it drastically, and we weren’t willing to accept that,” he said.
Peterson, the city forester, agrees.
“In this neighborhood, they have come together and are able to treat these trees and maintain that canopy,” she said. “I think they’ve made an amazing choice.”
She acknowledged that saving ash trees might be cost-prohibitive for a lot of neighborhoods, particularly ones that don’t have HOAs.
Park at Forest Green’s ash tree preservation efforts recently earned one of the neighborhood’s cul-de-sacs the Overland Park Legacy of Greenery Committee’s Canopy Street of Excellence Award.
That award, given out annually since 2021, recognizes a street that has demonstrated a commitment to protecting its street tree canopy.
“We weren’t willing to sacrifice all those years of growth”
When Wright and his wife, Kelley, first bought their home in 2002, the ash trees were pretty small, including one in their front yard. Over the years, they’ve watched them grow and mature, and now the trees tower over the streets.
His cul-de-sac alone still has dozens of mature, healthy ash trees.
“It’s so pretty to drive along the streets, especially in the fall,” he said. “It’s really beautiful, and we weren’t willing to sacrifice all those years of growth for these beautiful trees.”
Johansen pointed to the impact ash tree removal has had on other neighborhoods around the city.
“We look around to see what other neighborhoods that weren’t treating them, and it’s a big difference,” he said. “Night and day.”
While the removed ash trees have been or will be replaced with other species, those new trees are just saplings when they’re planted. That means they aren’t as tall or full as the mature ash trees in Park at Forest Green, and it will be several years before they are.
Park at Forest Green has still lost some ash trees
As for the Park at Forest Green neighborhood’s ash trees, the treatments — applied by a tree care and landscaping company each spring — have gone a long way to keep the ash trees alive.
However, it hasn’t been totally effective. There have been some breakthrough cases of emerald ash borer disease. Of the 300 ash trees originally catalogued in the roughly 120-home neighborhood, about 250 remain.
Those that didn’t survive because of an infestation or other problems have since been removed, Johansen said.
Still, Wright feels like that’s better than the wholesale removal of all of the neighborhood’s ash trees.
“I think we’re going to stick with it as long as necessary,” he said.
This article was first published in the Johnson County Post.
