Welcome to the Cully-Concordia International Grove
Planted in 2011, the International Grove is a green space adjacent to Lombard and 42nd avenues, northeast of the Ainsworth Linear Arboretum.
Writing this history is important to documenting the benefits and goals of our mature green spaces, especially when their health needs protection.
Why is it called the International Grove?
Trees were deliberately selected to represent not only native species (representing our indigenous population) but also trees from every inhabited continent. This makes the International Grove a living representation of the diversity we cherish in our neighborhoods, with people coming from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, other parts of North America, and Australia.
Benefits of the Grove
In the planning stages, the was a Bureau of Environmental Services-funded project. The conception of the International Grove was not only to enhance the Columbia River Watershed by planting trees that would help slow runoff into the Columbia Slough, but to do the following:
Intercept air pollution from Lombard, the Airport and the railroad. Concordia has some of the worst air quality in the City due to those industrial sources. The planting of many tall evergreen trees was designed to intercept and mitigate pollution drifting in to the neighborhood from the north.
Sound buffer. Tall evergreen trees were planted to buffer noise pollution from the trains, trucks and airplanes zooming north of the neighborhood.
Serve as an attractive northern gateway to the 42nd Avenue Business District and the Cully and Concordia neighborhoods. The interchange is often the first entry for visitors arriving to the area from the Airport or Lombard. The Grove was designed to welcome visitors with attractive, distinctive trees year-round (hence so many evergreens).
Represent the diversity of peoples in the Cully and Concordia neighborhoods. To our knowledge, there are no other neighborhoods in east Portland where one can see this unique of a mix of trees from all the continents where trees grow.
One goal for the Grove is a sign that would identify the grove for passing motorists entering the neighborhood. Many other neighborhoods identify their boundaries with such iconic signage. All Portland parks have such signs as well. The International Grove deserves one.
Protecting the Grove
The Grove also needs protection.
As housing density has increased without adequate parking for new residents, more and more people have taken to parking along the Grove, with many parking right up to the trees, compacting the soil and damaging the root zone of the trees.
Second, needed public safety and construction projects are using the Grove – indirectly as construction worker parking, but also directly as staging areas for building materials and equipment. The current website for the Lombard Bridge project is online here, describing the redevelopment of the bridge and long-term adjacent construction activities.
Initial estimates for staging areas suggested removing 4 to 5 trees, but currently that number has grown to removing 16 trees. Based on drawings, this would include blue Atlas cedars, Willamette Valley ponderosa pines, giant sequoias, dawn redwoods - and possibly some others.
The existing trees are now 12 years old, and the expectation is to replant nursery trees after the construction is complete. By replanting mature trees with very young trees, the values indicated above – as sound and air quality buffers, as a vibrant and representative welcome to the neighborhood, are dialed back ten years in time and volume. The Tree Team hopes to replant the mature trees elsewhere, to preserve their value and benefits.