When John Wesselink starts talking about trees, all that eager listeners can do is try to keep up with him, not just in absorbing the information he shares, but physically, too. With his eyes on the canopy, Wesselink will zig, zag and zip to the next tree he can’t wait to talk about.
Elizabeth Park, a small two-block green space tucked into the Columbia neighborhood, is the best small tree park between Vancouver and Seattle, in Wesselink’s opinion. Home to 59 species, the park is an exhibit of the exotic. Only 12 species found in the park are native to North America, and only three species are native to Western Washington.
He guides listeners through the taxonomy of each species, gently tugging down branches to showcase a unique reproductive feature (Pacific yew, Taxus brevifolia), a particularly beautiful cluster of cones (Port Orford cedar, Chamaecyparis lawsonia) or a peculiar needle arrangement gracing a cedar bough (deodar cedar, Cedrus deodara).
John Wesselink touches the leaves of a Lavalie Hawthorn. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) “I’m completely obsessed. I cannot walk by a tree now without knowing what it is,” Wesselink said. “When other guys are walking down the street, they’re looking at pretty women or cars or architecture or whatever. With me, I’m dead focused on trees.”
Wesselink credits the fact that he’s never been married to his long-term commitment to the canopy. His dining room table is covered in twigs and his home is scattered with pinecones.
Wesselink didn’t seem a likely candidate to become the local tree expert he is now. He attended Western Washington University, traveled in South America and Africa for three years, and served in the Vietnam War. After graduating in 1976 with a degree in English literature and art history, he worked as a mail carrier for 24 years, serving the Columbia neighborhood for 21 of them. He began his route each day in Elizabeth Park.
In the mid-’90s, he started to wonder what all the trees were. After trying and failing to track down a map, he decided to create his own.
John Wesselink has been mapping the trees of Bellingham since 2005, like this map of Elizabeth Park. (Map courtesy of John Wesselink) With that, his obsession began.
“I started studying my butt off,” Wesselink said. Soon, city officials started contacting him asking for tree identifications. “So I said, ‘Well, I better grow into this role real quick. If everybody’s expecting me to be smart, I better get smart.’”
Whenever he could, Wesselink made the trek to arboretums in Seattle or botanical gardens in Vancouver, British Columbia. He smuggled samples across the border, purchased a microscope and dedicated his life to tree identification. When he retired from the USPS in 2007, he began his second career: mapping significant trees in Bellingham.
To date, he has mapped 13 neighborhood parks and green spaces. Currently, he’s working with a team to record the 250 best trees in Bellingham using digital mapping software. In the meantime, he leads city-sponsored tree tours throughout Bellingham.
Wesselink wants that knowledge to go beyond simply identifying trees. He hopes it will protect them as well.
“When you don’t have [strong tree protection] ordinances, what you’re left with is just educating the public,” Wesselink said. “Hopefully people will develop an appreciation for them and hopefully they won’t cut them down. It doesn’t have much teeth. But that’s all we’re left with.”
The city municipal code currently considers any tree with a breast-height diameter greater than 6 inches a “significant tree.” These trees, depending on where they are located, have protections that require a permit from the city to clear or modify them.
But in an April 25 presentation to the City Council about those existing tree protections, council member Michael Lilliquist pointed out an important gap in the code. Currently, the species and size of a tree beyond 6 inches in diameter is not considered when it comes to tree permit approval.
“The stories that I hear that bring the most concern don’t have to do with that size tree; they have to do with really large trees,” Lilliquist said at the Committee of the Whole meeting. “When large trees come down, there’s a great deal of concern.”
Additionally, trees can be cleared on private developed land with no permit as long as they do not fall within a critically protected area, like riparian zones or fish habitat, and as long as the lot cannot be further divided and developed. On undeveloped land, trees can be cleared with no permit if the cleared area is no larger than 500 square feet, or the size of an average high school classroom.
These gaps, Lilliquist said, fail to address how important large trees are to communities for the stormwater they purify, the habitat they create and the shade they provide, among other ecological services.
Because current protections aren’t adequate to protect the big trees he has come to love, Wesselink said the best thing he can do is try to inspire others around him to stand up for the trees. He hopes the maps will create a shared appreciation for the canopy.
American elm trees line the eastern edge of Elizabeth Park. John Wesselink created a map of the 59 different species of trees in Bellingham’s oldest park. (Hailey Hoffman/Cascadia Daily News) Other groups, like the Happy Valley Neighborhood Association, are planting more trees for neighborhoods to admire for years to come. The Happy Valley Tree Program has planted around 350 trees, said John Hymas, who has coordinated the planting effort since 1999.
Happy Valley adopted the street tree planting program into its neighborhood plan, along with goals to develop greenbelts and habitat corridors by connecting trails and parks with native vegetation. In recent years, the neighborhood is shifting toward more hardy, drought-resistant trees like incense cedar, Garry oak and linden trees, Hymas said.
If other neighborhoods want to spruce up their own neighborhoods by planting trees, Hymas recommends making it a community gathering.
“Make it a big neighborhood event,” Hymas said. “Get as many kids involved as possible and turn it into a good time with pizza afterwards.”
Back at Elizabeth Park, Wesselink stooped over the ground below a bigleaf linden (Tilia platyphyllos), sifting through the piles of fallen leaves, looking for a particularly good specimen of the tree’s reproductive structure: a bract.
Success. He pulled the small leaf up from the ground and placed it in the palm of an eager learner next to him. The little leaf allowed the tree to spread its seeds with the hope of putting down new roots nearby.
Like the objects of his passion, Wesselink is establishing roots in the community, encouraging those around him to take a moment and notice the trees. Map by map, he wants to propagate people’s curiosity and hopes that curiosity will create stronger protections for the trees of Bellingham.
