By Coral Gables Gazette staff
The City of Coral Gables has once again been recognized as a Tree City USA community, marking its 41st consecutive year receiving the national designation and reaffirming a long-standing commitment to urban forestry and environmental stewardship. The recognition arrives during a milestone year for the city, which is celebrating its centennial, lending added resonance to an achievement rooted in decades of planning, policy and sustained investment in the urban tree canopy.
Milestone year for a long-running commitment
This year’s designation carries layered significance. It coincides not only with Coral Gables’ 100th anniversary, but also with the 50th anniversary of the Tree City USA program itself. The alignment underscores the city’s enduring role as an early and consistent participant in a national effort to promote community-based forest management. For Coral Gables, the recognition first bestowed on it in 1984 reflects continuity rather than novelty, reinforcing a civic identity shaped in part by tree-lined streets, shaded public spaces, and a development pattern that integrates greenery as infrastructure rather than ornament.
Comprehensive approach to managing urban forests
Tree City USA is a national program sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation, in partnership with the National Association of State Foresters, the USDA Forest Service, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the National League of Cities. The program recognizes municipalities that demonstrate a comprehensive approach to managing urban forests, including enforceable tree ordinances, dedicated funding, professional oversight, and active public engagement. Organizers have noted that this year’s recognition season highlights five decades of progress in elevating the role of trees in community planning nationwide.
Managing the canopy as civic infrastructure
City officials credit Coral Gables’ continued success to a systematic approach to tree care that extends beyond routine maintenance. Regular canopy assessments, proactive pruning, and long-term planning guide decisions about preservation, replacement, and expansion of tree cover across neighborhoods and commercial corridors. Green infrastructure considerations are integrated into development review, reflecting an understanding of trees as assets that support stormwater management, temperature moderation, and neighborhood character.
The city’s Greenspace Management division serves as the operational backbone of these efforts, overseeing planting, care, and preservation citywide. The division’s work supports not only environmental goals but also the visual identity that has long distinguished Coral Gables as a planned city attentive to landscape and scale.
Professional stewardship behind the recognition
“This recognition reflects the skill and passion our Greenspace Management staff bring to caring for our urban forest,” said Deena Bell-Llewellyn, assistant director of Public Works for the Greenspace Management division. “Our certified arborists and landscape professionals work every day to maintain the character and environmental health that define Coral Gables.”
City officials note that professional staffing and certification have been critical to meeting and exceeding Tree City USA standards year after year, particularly as climate pressures, storms, and development demands place increasing strain on urban forests.
Looking ahead as the city enters its second century
As Coral Gables moves into its next century, the Tree City USA designation signals continuity in priorities that date back to the city’s founding vision. Urban forestry remains central to resilience planning, quality of life, and the city’s response to environmental challenges. While the annual recognition reflects past performance, city leaders frame it as a benchmark that informs future decisions about growth, sustainability, and stewardship.
Residents seeking more information about local tree management policies and programs can visit the city’s Tree Management page or explore resources provided by the Greenspace Management division.
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Let’s hope the City stands by their protection of the “tree scape” by protecting the “The Garden of Our Lord,” deemed a cultural landscape by two nationally recognized prominent UM School of Architecture professors. There are two (2) two-hundred year old oak trees on the property. These ahould NOT be destroyed and MUST be protected. I spoke to Jody Haynes of Signature Palms, who is an expert at moving large specimen trees. He told me the trees “could be moved” but it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, would take well over a year and there is no guarantee the trees would survive. This alone should be a good reason not to allow this project to proceed.
Please send the developer back to the drawing board and make this project fit in to the rest of the surrounding area (not 13 stories high) and PROTECT the oak trees and the garden.
Congratulations to the City’s 41-year record as Tree City USA. An honor that goes hand in hand with the City’s philosophy of aesthetics.
In planning Coral Gables, founder George Merrick employed the concepts of the Garden City and City Beautiful movements of comprehensive planning. This type of planning took into account the philosophy of aesthetics which played a major role in the movements.
Furthermore, the city plan’s landmark status not only protects its carefully developed urban landscape from ill-conceived projects that detract from the harmonious existing attributes of Merrick’s vision, but also safeguards against any potential giveaways or takeaways — specifically the greenscape features that are an integral part of the Garden City precepts. A perfect fit as a Tree City USA.
Today, the Garden City movement can best be appreciated in the area of the North Ponce District where one can find beauty and solace in its green corridor — an enclave with sculpted fountains, heritage trees, and The Garden of Our Lord — a walled sanctuary garden with biblical roots and swales populated with beautiful specimen oaks draped in whispering Spanish Moss. A landscape that plays tribute to Merrick’s vision for the area.
And to further understand Merrick’s intention for the district, one must refer to the landmarked city plan.
On page 32 of the plan, Merrick goes on to stipulate exact instructions to preserve the trees in the area. “The new development also will take steps to save from destruction full grown trees when new buildings are erected in new sections…as all of the full grown trees and old foliage will be kept intact…”
Keep intact.
Which brings one to a very important discovery. The district is also home to a natural heirloom–a close to 200-year old oak tree. A tree, worthy of not only protection, but also of reverance. For according to Merrick’s stipulation: any “full grown…old foliage trees” surrounding the area cannot be moved or destroyed.
This old oak must stay in place. A sentiment shared by expert plantsman and prominent horticulturist, Ian Simpkins, who recently studied the tree and concurred, “It cannot endure relocation…This tree is far too large — its huge girth would break apart from the pressures put upon it and its root system spreads over the entire park it occupies. Relocation would spell certain death…” In other words, the “full grown tree” must remain intact.
On page 11 of the city plan, Merrick’s master planner, Frank Button, Florida’s first registered landscape architect, observed during an assessment of Merrick’s land: “A careful study was made of the natural conditions and beauties of the property [a tract of 1200 acres] and care taken to preserve ALL trees.”
Proposed development projects need to recognize Merrick’s landmarked city plan and abide by his stipulation that “New development take steps to save from destruction full grown trees…and old foliage will be kept intact…”
These trees were standing long before Coral Gables ever existed. And Merrick respectfully navigated the inherited greenscape as a central edict to his urban planning dictum.
Yes, Merrick was a developer, and, yes, he developed a brand new city, but he also made sure to keep the old foliage intact.
So all this background is to stress that as the City of Coral Gables has once again been recognized as a Tree City USA community, it must take its mandate seriously and Protect and Preserve The Garden of Our Lord with its heritage trees. Yes, The Garden is in private hands, but for heaven’s sake Coral Gables, as a proud recipient of the Tree City USA, do as you say, buy the parcel, and follow the mission to “elevate the role of trees in community planning nationwide.”