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At least 40 cherry trees planted along Mountain View’s downtown medians are dying and will likely need to be removed in the coming months, another casualty of California’s ongoing drought, according to city parks officials. After years of state-mandated water restrictions, city officials say they have been prohibited from irrigating the trees, which have become stressed and are starting to die.
“It’s one of the those unfortunate byproducts of following the rules and regulations we got stuck with,” said Bruce Hurlburt, city open-space and parks manager. “I’m as frustrated as anyone else. It’s one of those things where you’re caught in the middle no matter what you do.”
California’s drought officially started in 2012, but for many the emergency truly hit home three years later when Gov. Jerry Brown declared an emergency and imposed severe mandatory water-conservation measures. Mountain View staff was prohibited from turning on the sprinkler system in the medians.
In a sense, many elements of downtown Mountain View are conspicuous remnants from a pre-drought mindset. There’s the city’s downtown water fountain at the Civic Center Plaza that has been shut off and empty for years. Another example is the Castro Street medians, which were planted with cherry trees and ornamental grass turf that today would be verboten.
The lifeless brown cherry trees are a blight on Mountain View’s downtown strip, said Roy Mize, a local resident who brought his concerns to city officials. He suggested the city could have taken out the grass along the medians and replaced it with wood chips or some other material.
“If this is going to be the facade of City Hall, it’s not a very good picture,” he said. “There’s things we could do if our hands were just untied a little.”
But even if city officials had taken a tanker truck and went around to individually water the cherry trees, it’s still likely that they would have died, Hurlburt said. After years of plentiful irrigation, the trees had developed a shallow root system that limited their ability to tap water that soaked deep into the ground, he said.
The city similarly stopped irrigating dozens of redwoods and other trees planted along the medians of Middlefield Road, but those seem healthy, Hurlburt said. Mountain View parks officials were able to water other road medians throughout the city while following a citywide goal to reduce water-use by 20 percent over the last three years, he said.
Despite 2016 being a much wetter year, California’s trees are continuing to suffer from the drought years, and experts say that California’s once-verdant forests remain desiccated and stressed. Last month, the U.S. Forest Service announced it had tallied at least 66 million trees that had died throughout the Sierra Nevada range from the drought conditions and insect infestations, which now present a looming fire danger.
Hurlburt said the city officials had no immediate plans to remove the downtown cherry trees, but they would discuss it later this year. Sometime in the fall, city parks officials plan to hire a landscape architect to work on redesigning the Castro Street medians.
Any future design for the medians would emphasize low-water use and drought-tolerant vegetation, Hurlburt said.
Email Mark Noack at mnoack@mv-voice.com
“wood chips”…
I was with it until the point. I’m in full agreement that we ought to transition to less water intensive landscaping styles, but we could easily do xeriscaping: drought tolerant plants like succulents, cacti and some ornamental grasses. These things can require little to no irrigation and can actually be attractive.
Please no wood chips.
No matter, its always a sadness to see trees cut down, and I am sure that there will be many people in the community who will miss the cherry trees in the median strip of Castro St., not to mention weigh in with some scathing remarks.
Yes, I will be one of those to notice the absence of foliage in those areas, but I am assuming and hoping that other trees will be planted in their stead. While cherry trees are beautiful, most especially in the early spring when they are showing off their beautiful blooms, I can think of other types of trees that might be more appropriate. The Arbutus comes to mind. I’ll bet there are others who have some great ideas as well (not to mention the City Arborist) that would be drought tolerant and a perfect fit.
Did anyone else get flyers in the mail from the City, telling us we should be good stewards of the trees in our yards? Of course we should, but it sounds like hollow advice when I pass those trees on Castro day after day. Don’t tell me they couldn’t figure out a way to save them. They tell residents to do so.
Whatever trees are chosen, please make sure they give enough shade to make the street as inviting as possible
@ fixiegirl.
You are so right – we received that flyer and had the same thoughts. It is not just on Castro Street, but trees on public property throughout the city that have been neglected. Even so, MV council barely gives a second thought to granting permits to remove heritage trees that might cause inconvenience for developers. El Camino Hospital and it’s 43 removal permits springs to mind…
Just don’t plant Maple tree’s they are the dirtiest tree in town. Just look at old high school way and you will see.
The state DID NOT prohibit watering medians. They prohibited watering medians planted with GRASS which would consume much more water than what would be needed to keep
the trees alive.
This is a disgrace.
Specifically, the item in the executive order read:
6. The Water Board shall prohibit irrigation with potable water of ornamental turf
on public street medians.
NOT TREES. Disgusting that these trees were killed off because of this bureaucracy.
Seriously with all our money in the city coffers, we couldn’t afford a monthly summer deep irrigation with portable non-potable water? Seriously?
Greg David is absolutely correct. The high plants at the intersection of Castro and California are a hazard to pedestrians, particularly children, who can be concealed behind them until the last second when it’s too late to avoid an accident. The limit is 36 inches per city ordinance. It’s just another case of the city saying “do as I say, not as I do.”
Here’s the link:
https://www.municode.com/library/ca/mountain_view/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIITHCO_CH36ZO_ARTXILA_DIV2GELARE_S36.34.10GELAST
I too received the mail about taking care of the tree in my front yard. Which I did.. and the tree has thrived during the drought while my lawn is mostly brown.
Just anothet example of the government not taking it’s own advice.
Do as I say not as I do.
I still have a dark green t-shirt the city gave out proclaiming proudly that Mountain View is Tree City USA.
Redwood City has a tanker truck that drives around the city once in a while and waters the city trees along the sidewalks and medians with potable water…does Mountain View have such a truck ?
Also…can’t the city install some pedestrian-activated lighted crosswalks along Castro street ?…I’ve seen plenty of cars almost hit pedestrians in the crosswalks because they were not seen (due to car a-pillar blind spots).
Palo Alto and most other cities cared about the money they had spent on trees and such. They had water trucks with reclaimed water provide water to their trees. There is no excuse for the city to have let these die. It will cost way more to replace them than it would have cost to keep them alive. And the comments about the flower baskets and islands. They are not a safety hazard, get a life. If you want nothing but succulents instead? Move to Phoenix……with recycled water, they have grass lawns there by the way………….Very bad decisions. The flower baskets are a godsend of beauty, do not let anyone turn this place into the greater Phoenix area. Flowers can be responsible if done right.
You are right. What a waste of labor and money to make our city look like a nice place to visit with all those money and time wasting flowers!
It’s not like it helps to paint a nice welcoming environment for all those darn visitors who crowd all those sidewalks on a warm summer night. Good thing they don’t spend any money or anything like that!
It is part of how Castro has transformed into a top notch and desirable destination to attract significantly more locals and visitors since I moved here I the mid 1990’s.
By your thinking, asphalt all the medians and might as well sell and post nothing but advertising where those wasteful bits of pleasing color exist currently?
Use reclaimed water, have the same amazing guy continue to take care of them, he is an artist to anyone that has ever tried to maintain baskets like these. Be frivolous, continue to let our city look better those around it.
If this doesn’t sound right to you? Move to Tuscon or even more out into the desert. I moved here so that I could walk down the street in a simple, nice, fun loving town.
Enjoy your cactus!
You want water intensive landscaping everywhere? Move to the South. See? I can tell people I disagree with to leave as well.
The fact is though, we have an ongoing drought that may just get worse and worse as time goes on. Keep the trees alive. Do what we can, but chuck the lawns. It’s called compromise.
Big street trees and flowering cherry Trees waste park and Rec budget that can be used for more important things like staff salary and new staff offices and meeting rooms in Rengstorff Park being built from park fees.
It is not about water. Mountain View has a watering truck that sits mostly idle and more free Purple recycled water that it can possible use. It is about money.
If we simply hack prune and let all the big street trees die and replace them with Crap Myrtle bushes, think of all the money that will not be wasted maintaining Mountain View Quality of life Canopy!
City staff knows and exploits this. Cut down a Heritage tree and get caught, and only pay for the permit you should have already paid for! If you want permission to cut a tree, hack prune it the year before. Then get permission to remove it!
Bruce Hurlburt, city open-space and parks manager and all OUR APPOINTED Park commissioners are doing a great job for us! Lets move them up to City Council next election!
Our city government can permit endless office parks but can’t keep its trees alive. Because office parks don’t use any water, right?
Useless people.
Are we sure they are dying? Those trees go dormant in winter. Possibly they are doing it early due to drought stress.
A real arborist needs to make a survey of these trees and possibly add a little water.
Too much water can kill cherry trees also. I know because I planted one right in a drainage swale and killed it with too much water in winter.
In Los altos Hills several huge walnut tees were cut down in winter because the city employees did not understand dormancy. they were at least 50 years old and were turned into firewood. If they had waited until spring the trees would have looked alive and we’d still have them.
Yeah, “potable” figures in there too. Surely some truck could periodically deliver NONPOTABLE WATER to the trees. But no biggie, the taxpayers can pay for it. BTW, Don’t we have “experts” who work for the city and do nothing but micromanage all of our private trees? Sad Sad Sad.
I’ve driven by these trees twice a day for the last five years, every day shaking my head as I watched them die. I also watched every day as gardeners tended to hanging pots full of flowers at Castro and California, watering them from portable watering tanks. Not only are these flowers frivolous and unnecessary, the ones planted in the center island grow to a height where they are actually a traffic hazard by restricting sight-lines towards other vehicles and pedestrians while traversing the intersection. The money spent on maintaining this flower garden is likely far more than it would have cost to fill a tank truck with reclaimed water once a week and keep the trees alive. We have a nearly endless supply of reclaimed water that goes unused. Millions of gallons a day of usable reclaimed water flow into the bay, yet we water flowers by hand in traffic intersections and allow viable trees to die. Something is amiss at city hall…
PS: Maybe through all this we could get a proper Christmas tree planted in the median to replace the one mistakenly cut down in 1988. Heck, they put a TEMPORARY 100 foot tree up in Rockefeller Square every year, why can’t we get a reasonable sized one planted downtown?
Hanging flower baskets are a waste of money and manpower. The flowers in the island, when they grow over the city ordnance restricted height of 36″, are a safety hazard.