Crews began planting 400 trees along a three-mile stretch of Route 9 this week, replacing a corridor of ash that was cut down between 2021 and 2023 after emerald ash borer moved through the valley.
The planting is deliberately unglamorous. Half the trees are oaks — swamp white, bur and northern red — with the rest split among hackberry, tulip poplar, black gum, sycamore and Kentucky coffeetree.
Why so many oaks
Because the last monoculture is what caused this. The Route 9 corridor was planted almost entirely in green ash in the 1980s, which is why one insect could empty three miles of it in two years.
We are not planting the tree that looks best in a rendering. We are planting six species that will still be standing in 2085 if one of them fails.
County forester Ilse Brandt
Oaks also support far more insect species than most alternatives, which matters for the birds that eat them. Brandt said the mix was chosen with that in mind, and with an eye toward species that tolerate road salt and a warming climate — hackberry and coffeetree in particular.
The boring, essential part
The trees are two-inch caliper stock, staked, mulched, and — critically — under a three-year watering contract. The county has planted trees before without one and lost better than 40 percent in the first two summers.
- 400 trees across three miles, both sides
- Six species, no species above 50 percent
- Three-year watering and replacement contract included
- Total cost $214,000, of which $150,000 is a state corridor grant
What it will look like
Not like much, for a while. Brandt says the corridor will read as a real tree line in about twelve years and will not resemble what was lost for twenty-five.
“Somebody planted the ash trees I cut down,” she said. “They did not get to see them either.”