The Garry Oak Society celebrates 10 years of stewarding Oak Harbor’s namesake trees.

As part of this observance, the Society invites community members to join a ribbon cutting ceremony of the Washington Heritage Register plaque at Smith Park at 1 p.m. on April 12. The park, which has been used since the 1860s, recently became one of only three parks in the state to join the list.

Surrounded by about 150 Garry oak trees in “Old Town” Oak Harbor, the ceremony will feature light refreshments, free raffles of Garry oak items, a speech by City Archaeologist Gideon Cauffman and the cutting of the ribbon by Avis Rector, a Whidbey old-timer and historian who, back when she taught at the elementary school, would encourage her students to plant Garry oak trees, according to Society President Laura Renninger.

The nonprofit, composed of community volunteers, has been vital in the preservation of the Garry oak trees, which according to Vice President Brad Gluth, have severely dropped in number around the state due to urban development.

The society came to be in April 2015 — on the city’s 100th anniversary — when a group of Quercus garryana enthusiasts met at Whidbey Coffee to discuss the planting of more trees and the protection of existing oaks.

While surveying the trees, volunteers noticed that less than 3% of the Garry oaks within the city were juveniles, something that Laura Renninger said was “really alarming.” This lack of young trees, she said, meant the canopy that was aging out did not have enough trees that could replace it.

In 1990s, many Garry oaks were cut down to build condos and apartments, prompting locals to demand the city to protect the oaks from destruction, according to information provided by the Garry Oak Society. This resulted in the enactment of Oak Harbor Municipal Code 20.16, which created critical area protections for the city’s Garry oaks. Now, cutting and pruning these trees requires a special permit, while their removal is strongly discouraged.

With less of these ancient giants remaining, the Society was born to ensure the Garry oaks could thrive and be celebrated for years to come.

In the fall of 2015, the Society planted 100 saplings in celebration of Oak Harbor’s 100th anniversary, adding about 300 seedlings in later years, said Gluth, a civil engineer who pushed the city to create an oak grove on the former Boyer property — an open space located at the intersection of Highway 20 and Fakkema Road. The work was a grassroots effort led by the city with the help of volunteers from the Society, the Garden Club and the Navy, Gluth said.

To date, about 370 trees remain. To protect them from wood-chomping rodents, the Society resorted to installing predator perches made of driftwood on top of old wood street sign posts placed near the Garry oaks. The Society found that relying on hawks and falcons to take care of the issue was an effective strategy, Gluth said.

Now, the Society hopes the city will allow the planting of more trees, according to member and director of special projects Kyle Renninger, who proposed the idea to the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission in January. If that doesn’t happen, Laura Renninger said, the society could plant native understory — which is vegetation that grows beneath the main canopy of a forest.

Some of that work has already been done at Smith Park, where native flowers like shooting stars, fawn lilies and chocolate lilies dot the landscape in small restoration beds.

With the gazebo, the flowers, the merry-go-round and the view of the Salish Sea, the park has been a place for wedding and graduation photos, Easter egg hunts, picnics and other happy memories.

Over the years, the park has seen some significant improvements. The vegetation was overgrown, leaving little room for sunlight to pass through, and a chain link fence outlined part of its perimeter where a white fence, installed by the city, now stands.

In collaboration with the Oak Harbor Garden Club and the city, the society removed the dead and diseased wood and brought the surviving trees to a healthy state, attracting birds — including three species of woodpeckers — and other critters.

Laura Renninger and Gluth, who live near the park, have been hearing owls lately, which is a good sign.

“It’s been probably 15 years since I last heard owls in this neighborhood,” Laura said.

As far as the Society is aware, Smith Park is the only city park in the state to be exclusively made up of mature Garry oak trees — the state’s only native oak tree. Based on the diameter of their trunks, some trees are estimated to be hundreds of years old.

It is no coincidence that Richard Lansdale, an early Whidbey settler, named the area “Oak Harbor” in 1851, according to information provided in Smith Park’s historic register application.

Kyle Renninger likes to think of the Garry oaks as historical monuments representing Oak Harbor’s Indigenous heritage. These trees were a source of food and materials for the island’s first inhabitants, who would use controlled burns to keep their habitat healthy.

“They were alive when Native Americans and the Native American village were here, and when (Natives) were stewarding the land,” Kyle said. “Without our Garry oak trees, I think we would really lose our identity.”

(Photo by Luisa Loi) At left, Laura Renninger, Kyle Renninger and Brad Gluth pose with the plaque announcing that Smith Park has been placed on the Washington Heritage Register. The plaque, designed by Kyle, will be dedicated with a ceremony on April 12. The granite boulder pays homage to the park’s large rocks (naturally deposited there by glaciers), which Laura said came from a single rock that was blown apart with dynamite in the city’s early days.