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Fort Greene Park's Tree Trail Reboots for Arbor Day

 The NYC Parks Department and the Fort Greene Park Conservancy will lead guided tours of Fort Greene Park's tree trail this Arbor Day.
The NYC Parks Department and the Fort Greene Park Conservancy will lead guided tours of Fort Greene Park's tree trail this Arbor Day.
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Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership

FORT GREENE — Fort Greene Park will debut its newly restored Tree Trail just in time for Arbor Day.

The park will launch its updated tree trail this Saturday with free guided tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The new tree trail, which runs north to south along the eastern side of the park, includes 19 stops that showcase Brooklyn’s oldest and largest trees, many of which were planted in the 1860s.

The original tree trail, established in 2007 with the help of local Eagle Scouts, included 39 labeled trees, but many of the signs and posts had started to deteriorate. 

The Fort Greene Park Conservancy and the Parks Department started planning the tree trail’s restoration a year ago, according to Julian Macrone, programming and development manager for FGPC.

Over the course of six months, FGPC and the parks department worked with volunteers to streamline the trail, restore the posts, and design new signs and brochures.

“We reduced the size to focus on the more ecologically important and more architecturally important trees in the park,” Macrone said.

Macrone said the updated trail will focus on the trees that are most important to the landscape and fabric of the park. 

Species include English elm, magnolia or tulip trees, Osage orange, red oak, linden plane, American elm and Himalayan white pine.

Macrone says the park’s European beech, a copper varietal, is looking “particularly spectacular” ahead of this weekend’s tree trail tours.

He also recommends the park’s newly planted American elms, which replaced elm trees that have been wiped out over the years due to Dutch elm disease.

“I have a soft spot for the American elm on the trail that was recently planted with the redesign of the Willoughby Avenue entrance,” Macrone said. “I think the new planting of elms in the park holds an interesting significance.”

This Saturday’s guided tours, the first in the tree trail’s history, will take place on the hour and last for half an hour. Parkgoers can also pick up tree trail brochures at the park’s Visitors Center and go on self-guided tours.

Guided tours will meet and start at the entrance on Dekalb and South Portland avenues.