In KC, 25-year-old ornamental trees at Kauffman Garden are cut down. ‘It’s very sad’
At the Ewing and Muriel Kauffman Memorial Garden — a verdant English-inspired arboretum in Kansas City that opened 26 years ago this Memorial Day weekend — visitors were greeted each spring by a line of white-flowering China Snow Peking lilacs.
Planted when the garden was new, and having grown over the last 25 years, the ornamental trees created an enchanting tunnel, a leafy and arching entryway into the two-acre garden.
The trees in the straight entryway, known as the allée, are now gone, having grown old — dying, dead, or on their way — and were cut to the ground on Tuesday to make way for new plantings, the garden announced Wednesday on its Facebook page.
“Kauffman Memorial Garden is always changing and growing!” the post said. “The trees in the allée were declining rapidly, and that meant it was time to remove and replace!”
Ewing and Muriel Kauffman Memorial Garden
“It’s very sad,” Hannah Wadke, one of the garden’s horticulturists, said Thursday. “We’re not super happy about it, but we are happy to continue the garden’s growth.”
In ideal conditions, a China Snow Peking lilac can live 40 to 50 years, generally considered hardy and weather resistant. But like other ornamental varieties, they can be stressed by sudden and severe cold snaps.
In Kansas City in late March, just as many ornamental trees were flowering, temperatures fluctuated wildly from a high of 95 degrees on March 26 to a low of 31 degrees two days later on the morning of March 28.
“I don’t know exactly what happened,” Wadke said of the trees. “They got old. They were declining in health. Some just did not grow after a certain amount. We had multiple dead trees actually in there.”
China Snow Peking lilac
The ground lining the allée is currently bare. But next week, Wadke said, a new line of 15-gallon Pink Pom Poms redbud trees, which bloom with a cluster of buds, are to be planted in their place.
“We are pretty excited to have them,” Wadke said. “Then we’ll also fill them in with some more shrubs and annuals.”
On Thursday, the rest of the garden was in full flourish with its potted Calamondin orange trees, the Meyer lemon, the line of Japanese flowering crab apples, the southern magnolias, bell flowers, hydrangeas, ferns, allium, spiraea and copious other shrubs, flowers and trees.
The Muriel McBrien Kauffman Family Foundation oversees the garden. The foundation is primarily committed to supporting the arts, whereas The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is primarily focused on economic mobility, entrepreneurship and education.
Ewing and Muriel Kauffman
The memorial garden, which is free and open to the public daily from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., is also the final resting place of the Kauffmans. Ewing Kauffman, who built the pharmaceutical company, Marion Labs, into a multibillion-dollar business, was also the founder, in 1969, of the Kansas City Royals.
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Ewing Kauffman, who died on Aug, 1, 1993 at age 76, is buried on the garden’s grounds alongside his spouse, who died on March 17, 1995, at age 78.
