A park in the Logan Square neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side has received official accreditation as an arboretum.
Murphy Westwood, with the Morton Arboretum, announced the official designation for Palmer Square Park as neighbors looked on.
“The first ever Chicago Park District location accredited as an arboretum,” she said to applause.
Palmer Square Park is three blocks long and one block wide.
Steve Hier, President of the Homeowners Association of Palmer Square says this story started 45 years ago, when the association was formed.
“The park was in disastrous condition with only 37 trees left, broken benches,” he said.
Today there are more than 200 trees and 28 varieties.
Starting in 1980, the association members decided they wanted to do something about the park.
“We were trying to make a safe place for our kids,” Hier said.
Every spring and fall, they would plant 15 trees.
“And we got them by hook and by crook and donation,” he said.
Some that were planted in the 80s were an inch in diameter and about 5 feet tall.
They’re now about 50 feet tall.
Hier said he could never have imagined back then that the park would have arboretum status.
He was asked what it means to him.
“Well, it’s a legacy,” he said. “You need trees and what trees do, I think, is they provide people a sense of calm.”
There are a few Dutch Elms in the park that were planted in 1890.
The neighbors paid to have them injected over the years to save them from Dutch Elm Disease.
Murphy Westwood, with the Morton Arboretum, said ArbNet, administered by the Morton Arboretum, is “the only accreditation program in the world specific to arboreta.”
She said, “an arboretum is a living museum of trees and other woody plants curated by an organization that has a commitment to care for the collection and engage the public about trees and other woody plants.”
ArbNet is a global program, she said, having accredited nearly 850 arboreta in 40 countries.