Finding a New Home

The Narcoossee Road widening project led by the City of Orlando is well underway. In addition to expanding the road from four to six lanes, Lake Nona is collaborating with the City to relocate hundreds of trees that previously filled the medians along one of our community’s main corridors.

Lake Nona’s lead landscape architect, Matt McDermott, in partnership with the City of Orlando’s Public Works and Transportation Departments began planning the tree move earlier this year to extend the life of hundreds of crepe myrtle, oak, palm, and cypress trees that would have otherwise been recycled. In total, the teams hope to relocate 335 trees.

“The City of Orlando is proud to partner with Lake Nona on this innovative project to take trees that needed to be moved and reuse them by relocating them to new homes in the area,” said FJ Flynn, City of Orlando Deputy Chief Administrative Officer. “These trees we are moving today will help further enhance the Lake Nona neighborhood for years to come, while also helping to clean our air, create habitats for wildlife and ensure our City Beautiful remains just that, beautiful.”

In April, the teams started the relocation process by root pruning prior to moving the trees to a temporary staging area before being replanted. By November, you’ll find new oaks and crape myrtles along Lake Nona Boulevard and washingtonia palms at Ariel apartments. Dozens more will be saved for future development Town Center and other upcoming projects including the linear park planned between Laureate Park and Town Center. A comprehensive mix of fertilizers and fungicides in addition to a robust maintenance program have been developed to ensure the relocated trees will thrive in their new home.

Originally planted when Narcoossee Road was widened in the early 2000s, the trees are  roughly 25-30 years old range anywhere from 30-50 feet tall.

Saving trees is nothing new for Lake Nona. Our in-house landscaping team has been relocating trees from throughout the community, including a significant population of live oaks, red maples, sabal palms, and slash pines, for more than a year. Since 2019, Lake Nona’s landscape team has spent more than 2,000 hours identifying, pruning, moving, replanting, fertilizing, and watering more than 200 relocated trees to help maintain our arbor ecosystem’s health and preservation.

Stay tuned for more environmental initiatives as our community continues to grow and explore new ways to care for our local environment and stay connected to the great outdoors.