The Hardy Park Elm

Every so often a city crew comes to Hardy Park and injects this elm, and the record of it sits in Washington's tree inventory beside the measurements. The injection is the standard defence against Dutch elm disease, the fungus that has taken most of the great American elms that once lined the streets of the eastern United States. This one is still standing, and still being looked after, pruned in 2025, inspected again in May 2026 and rated Good. It is worth the trouble. The trunk is about 163 centimetres across at chest height, which puts its girth at roughly 5.1 metres, and it is one of the two largest American elms in the city's inventory of public street and park trees. The other is about two kilometres north on 38th Street in Glover Park. What sets this one apart is room. The record gives its crown an area of about 615 square metres, the spread of an elm that grew in the open with nothing to lean away from. Everything else in Hardy Park is small. Within twenty metres the inventory finds only two young Kwanzan cherries and a redbud, which makes the elm look even bigger than it is. The city's record is the only source for this tree, and it gives no planting date. Nobody has put an age on it. If you know the history of Hardy Park, or remember the elm when it was younger, tell us.