Restoration of Roanoke Park continues with grant for tree inventory

The Roanoke Park Conservancy and a group of dedicated volunteers are working to restore Roanoke Park. They’ve removed invasive honeysuckle and are building trails. The next step is a tree inventory to guide future decisions.

Posted by Joe Lambe

The Missouri Department of Conservation recently awarded a grant of more than $8,900 to inventory trees in Roanoke Park.

It is part of an effort by the nonprofit Roanoke Park Conservancy to remove invasive plants, restore native forest and increase use of one of the original parks in the city park and boulevard system designed by George Kessler.

Volunteers have already removed much invasive shrub honeysuckle from the 37.6‑acre park, and more of that remains to be done, said Chris DeLong, a volunteer with the Conservancy.

Terms of the matching grant include $1,300 in volunteer labor and $1,678 more that will have to be raised in citizen contributions.

The effort will pay for a GIS mapmaker and a certified arborist to identify, list and map trees with trunk diameters of more than three inches, which is estimated to be up to 2,000 trees.

“It’s providing baseline data of what trees are in the park so we can make decisions about future plantings,” DeLong said. Native species that provide habitat and food for wildlife will be favored in those decisions, he said.

The state grant for $8,932 is part of the Tree Resource Improvement and Maintenance Grant program that helps agencies, public schools and nonprofit groups with management, improvement or conservation of trees on public lands.

Contributions to the matching fund can be mailed to Roanoke Park Conservancy, care of Linda J. Laurence, at Missouri Bank, 1044 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64105.

Comments are closed.