The City of Wabasha Public Works Department is finishing up planting over 433 trees of 6 different varieties. The City of Wabasha received a $33,343 grant from the Minnesota Department of Nature Resources to plant trees in order to replace the 950 ash trees that had to be removed due to the Emerald Ash Borer Disease. This disease is from an invasive beetle from Asia that attacks and kills trees. Unfortunately, it has decimated almost all ash trees in Wabasha and across the Midwest.
“The whole Public Works Department worked extremely hard over the past couple of years to get this tremendous project completed for our city,” said Riley Costello, Assistant Public Works Director,” When the City had to take down a number of trees, due to the diseases, you could easily see how it affected the landscape of our parks and residences’ properties. It is now pretty easy to see new trees no matter what part of town you’re driving through and we are proud of that!” said Costello.
Tony Johnson, Public Works Director added, “ Trees increase our air pollution filtration, provide shade, and increase property value. All trees have already been allocated for specific locations around town, If you get a tree on your boulevard, we ask the public to help us out by keeping the trees watered this summer.”
The Wabasha Kellogg Area Community Foundation also supported the purchase of some of these trees with a financial contribution to the City of Wabasha. If you would like to support more trees being planted in the City of Wabasha, you can donate to the City, with your gift being designated for “Wabasha Trees”.
This project was conducted in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
(Photo by: City of Wabasha, Brandon Huth, and Ryan Johnson)
The following link https://mntca.umn.edu/resources will bring you to University of Minnesota’s – Tree Care Advocate Resources Page where you can access “Tree Owner’s Manual”, “Care for a new tree”, and “Watering a new tree” and much more!
