Tree Davis seeks community feedback on future plans
By ALMA CULVERWELL — city@theaggie.org
The city of Davis along with local nonprofit organization Tree Davis is seeking community feedback on their plans to transform parts of Robert Arneson Park into climate-ready landscapes.
Tree Davis held two in person feedback sessions on Thursday, Jan. 25 and on Saturday Jan. 27. They also created an online feedback form intended for Wildhorse residents to share their thoughts about the project.
Executive Director for Tree Davis Torin Dunnavant described the term climate-ready landscape as pollinator gardens and drought tolerant native plants. Tree Davis has successfully implemented several other similar plans, including Memorial Grove.
Dunnavant explained how the plan to renovate Arneson Park originated two years ago with the implementation of their Tribute Trees funded by community members and planted in honor of a loved one or memory.
“We were just finishing up with all the space that we wanted to convert in the Memorial Grove, and as we saw that happening, we realized there’s still a lot of people that are interested in participating. And so we started thinking about […] there’s another location where we can do this,” Dunnavant said. “Robert Arneson Park, it’s actually a park where one of our longtime supporters is a resident as well as actually a couple people that you know were like, ‘hey, you should think about doing this in Robert Arnison Park.’”
Their plan for the Robert Arneson park includes transforming unused parts of the park into pollinator gardens and mini forests.
Dunnavant also described how the project plan has been met with positive feedback from the community thus far.
“In every way, the feedback has been thoughtful [and] generally very supportive,“ Dunnavant said. “We’ve definitely gotten a little bit of discomfort [but] we really are kind of getting into with very specific elements like where should a specific tree get placed and that sort of thing. But no, there really has been almost […] 100% support for it.”
Dunnavant continued that the main concern from community members is the question of upkeeping the park, but he assured that Tree Davis would oversee the upkeep as planned in their funding model.
Written by: Alma Culverwell — city@theaggie.org
