Tree planting begins at Coleman Hill Park to revitalize the Cherry Blossom Trail in Downtown Macon

"The cherry tree is obviously very sacred in Macon-Bibb County, but over the years, we've kind of just lost touch, I guess you'll say, with the Cherry Blossom Trail and kind of incorporating that into the Cherry Blossom Festival,” said Michael Glisson, Director of Parks & Beautification Department.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – The Parks & Beautification Department started planting trees early Friday morning at Coleman Hill Park to remap and revitalize the Cherry Blossom Trail in Downtown Macon.

This project was made possible by Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful who received a $10,000 grant earlier this week from the Fickling Family Foundation.

A variety of Cherry Blossom trees will be planted along with adding and replacing Yoshino Cherry trees to make the trail more appealing to downtown visitors.

“Well, you know, the cherry tree is obviously very sacred in Macon-Bibb County, but over the years, we’ve kind of just lost touch, I guess you’ll say, with the Cherry Blossom Trail and kind of incorporating that into the Cherry Blossom Festival,” said Michael Glisson, Director of Parks & Beautification Department. “So we kind of remapped the trail to kind of stay towards downtown or around Carolyn Crayton Park and, you know, kind of for the sake of the festival, people wouldn’t have to go way out to Wesleyan Woods and way outside of downtown to be able to see these trees.”

Glisson says they decided to start with Coleman Hill Park because it was the easiest to begin with due to its wide open area.

“What we decided to do was go with locations that are county owned properties, like county parks. So, you know, the original trail, again, was up towards, Wesleyan Woods and Rivoli in those areas which were private property owners, which God bless them, they would let people come out and kind of take pictures on their property and things like that, but we wanted to be able to have a trail again where people could come and wouldn’t have to feel like they’re kind of intruding on somebody’s property,” said Glisson.

Laurie Fickling of the Fickling Family Foundation says that the reason for giving the grant to Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful is because it’s the foundation’s mission to continue her great grandfather’s legacy with cherry blossom trees and other projects that he was passionate about.

She says they worked with Visit Macon to remap the trail and the new trees are from a nursery created by Wayne Woodworth who has started a cherry blossom revitalization project of his own to combat diseased trees.

“So, he went to the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., and found out that they have a program to hybridize the trees. This particular type is a mix between the Yoshino, which is the one that you see most around town, and one called the Taiwan Cherry. That is more heat tolerant. So it doesn’t struggle as much with the diseases, but it’s much pinker and it blooms much earlier. So hybridizing it with the Yoshino that is the traditional one we have for the festival was a great option for this area,” said Fickling.

50 trees were planted for phase one of the project and more trees will also be planted in the next phases in various locations across Downtown Macon.