Ho-ho-hold on! New downtown hollies won’t look so jolly after crews finish pruning this week
13 shade trees, partially installed last week on Lake and Lucerne, will be trimmed before the Lake Worth Beach Street Painting Festival starts Saturday, city says
A LANDSCAPE COMPANY is scheduled to complete the installation of 13 new downtown shade trees this week, before crowds arrive Saturday for the annual Lake Worth Beach Street Painting Festival.
Mya Contruservice crews started the long-awaited process last week by planting 10 dahoon holly trees along the sidewalks of Lake and Lucerne avenues, under a $51,467 contract approved Jan. 6 by the City Commission.
Three more will be planted early this week, and then all 13 trees — each about 13 feet tall — will be pruned and trimmed by late Thursday, Interim City Manager Jamie Brown told the Lake Worth Beach Independent today.
“They will come back this week and trim all of those. They will expose three or four feet of the trunk and then they trim the sides,’’ Brown said.
Brown said he was not aware of criticism on social media over the weekend with photos of some of the newly-planted trees partially blocking the sidewalks and expanding into parallel parking spots.
The pre-trimmed hollies look a lot like Christmas trees, prompting some creative critics to decorate one — on Lake Avenue just west of M Street — with holiday bulbs and ornaments.
“What the hell is that????” read a post on the Dave’s Last Resort Facebook page, showing a tree outside the popular Lake Avenue seafood restaurant.
“We don’t ever believe in trashing our city but this is ridiculous!,’’ the post read. “Are they going for Christmas year round?!”
Please be patient, Brown said.
He said the trees were partially installed the way they looked when they arrived from the tree farm, with no trunks or canopies, but the installation process has not been completed.
“If people are thinking that’s the finished product, that is incorrect,’’ he said. “I would think people would know that because there’s still dirt around the bottom of them. They haven’t cleaned the pavers yet. It will all be done before the street painting (festival).
An example of what the finished trees will look like when mature, Brown said, can be found outside the Lake Worth Beach Municipal Library, where a dahoon holly has been thriving just north of the library steps near Lucerne Avenue for about 15 years.
The new trees are replacing oaks and palms that over the years have died or were removed because of root systems that buckled the sidewalk.
On a recommendation by the advisory Tree Board, the city settled on dahoon hollies, Brown said, because the ones selected produce little to no fruit, do not have an expansive root system and have a manageable canopy that can withstand high winds without topping lover.
“A massive canopy, it would look great, but it’s not really practical for our downtown,’’ he told commissioners in January.
The hollies, originally approved Dec. 2, would have been installed and pruned before Christmas.
But Commissioner Chris McVoy, with support from Commissioner Anthony Segrich, convinced the commission Dec. 16 to look for alternate trees and try to cancel the order for the hollies.
McVoy and Segrich had concerns the hollies will need too much watering and won’t provide an ideal shade canopy.
But on Dec. 18, Brown told commissioners in a letter that the city was already on the hook for the $51,467 because the contractor, acting on the commission’s Dec. 2 approval, had already purchased the hollies from a tree farm.
Segrich suggested the city plant the dahoon hollies at the golf course or in Bryant Park and spend money on better shade-tree options for downtown.
He said he has seen the 10 hollies that were planted last week. He is still concerned that the new trees will not flourish and that exposing more than two feet of trunk at this stage could kill the trees.
“It will take three years to get a proper trunk shape and five to six years before it will offer shade,’’ he said.
Last month, McVoy and Segrich urged other commissioners to find other options.
“If you have a goal of having the characteristic picturesque canopy over our downtown, you’re not going to get it from dahoon holly. It doesn’t shape that way,’’ McVoy said.
Segrich agreed and said last month that “it’s never too late to correct a mistake.’’
“It’s unfortunate we are where we are and we don’t want to go back and correct the issue,’’ he said. “I’d rather see us do something with more longevity and achieve other goals like a real canopy and real aesthetic for downtown.’’
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