If you haven’t been to Rollins Park in a while – or if you haven’t kept up with the Monitor over the past year or so – you might not have noticed that about 250 trees were cut down in February. The move, painful to many Rollins Park fans, was necessary – about 200 red pines were infected with invasive bugs called scales and were expected to die at some point this year.
Since then, the once-shady area on the Bow Street side of Rollins has been pretty bare and full of unsightly stumps and debris.
Now you can help restore that area to the pleasant, forest-like state it used to be in through the Adopt a Tree program.
The idea is pretty simple: The city is looking for donations to help purchase and plant new trees at the park in the spring. The city budget includes money for about 50 trees, but the hope is that donations can help bring the total up over 100.
If you choose to donate, you’ll be rewarded with your name on a plaque that will then be installed somewhere at Rollins (donor names will also be included in the Parks and Recreation Department’s donation reports to the city council). That way you and your legacy of giving can live on as long as the trees you helped plant – and maybe even longer.
There are four donation levels available: Evergreen, Shade, Flowering and Grove. The Evergreen Level costs $350 and gets you (and by you we mean Rollins Park) a balsam fir, white pine or white spruce tree of 6 to 7 feet in height. The Flowering Level, for $450, gets you a witchhazel, serviceberry or flowering dogwood of 6 to 7 feet. Shade Level costs $650 and includes a red oak, sugar maple, beech, American hornbeam or yellow birch tree of 2 to 3 inches in diameter. The top-tier Grove Level runs $2,750 and includes five trees –three shade, one flowering and one evergreen.
These levels were developed in conjunction with the city’s Planning Division, which determined that the new trees should have a variety of sizes and shapes to create texture and depth, said Chris Jacques, grounds superintendent for Parks and Recreation.
The only thing left to work out is where these trees will come from.
“We haven’t picked the vendor yet,” Jacques said.
If you’re thinking about donating because you love the park, but maybe not so much that you’re ready to shell out a few hundred dollars, you can still make a smaller donation of any amount – “Every dollar counts,” Jacques said. So for example, if you wanted to throw $20 at the project, that’s plenty – you’ll still get your name on the plaque.
If you’re interested in contributing, call the office at 225-8690 and ask how you can donate.
