Euclid’s forestry program is continuing full steam ahead with an announcement that contractors with the Davey Resource Group started conducting “young tree training” Nov. 19 in all wards of the city. It’s expected that 762 young trees between 1 and 4 years of age will be “prun(ed) for clearance and structural integrity.” The tree management work will be conducted between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. and will be finished at the end of the year, according to a city Facebook post. Director of Planning and Development Patrick Grogan-Myers said in an interview after a Nov. 18 City Council meeting that the tree management is aimed at making sure trees grow upward instead of out — potentially disrupting traffic and blocking sidewalks. “When you plant a tree, you need to do young tree taming the first three years after it’s been planted and then approximately every three to five years on rotation after that until the tree has reached about 15 years old,” Grogan-Myers said. “Ultimately trees are expecting to grow in a forest so when they have light hitting them from all sides, they tend to grow out instead of up. “It’s really making sure that our investment in those young trees when they are planted continues to reap dividends in the years to come.” He said that part of the program will be removing trees that can’t be saved and are posing a hazard to residents. Euclid City Council recently approved nearly $60,000 in funds to remove those trees. After the first round of pruning is done this year, Grogan-Myers said they will create a rotation plan to ensure all trees in the city are being managed. “There are trees that were found in the inventory that either need to be fully removed or need significant pruning to make them safe, so we will undertake that piece next,” Grogan-Myers said. “Then we will start to build a rotation so every year we are working in the city on a rotating basis. Typically, about every seven or eight years we will make a full round in the city and make sure that trees are growing in a healthy way.” He said that the city will be looking at expanding its creative use of trees and that he wants to make sure the city has a diverse number of species of trees not only for the aesthetic look but also so that a disease wouldn’t wipe out the city’s entire tree stock. “One of the biggest things you want to do is make sure you have a diversity of trees because if you have something like the Emerald ash borer or Dutch elm disease come through, whatever the newest strain is, it won’t take everything out,” Grogan-Myers said. “You’ve got a diversity both in age and genus and species, so that no disease takes out your entire street tree population. “This is really the start of our urban forestry program,” Grogan-Myers continued. “We are in the process of hiring an Urban Forester and I believe we are getting very close to hiring that person. When they come on board, they are really working to build that annual tree maintenance program… so that we can have something that residents can rely upon just like they would with road resurfacing or water lines, it just becomes a regular part of our infrastructure maintenance and that’s done in partnership with the public service team absolutely through and through.”