BOYNTON BEACH’S URBAN FOREST

The residents of the City of Boynton Beach (“the City”, “Boynton Beach”) care about the place where they live, work, and recreate. The City recognizes the important role of the urban forest— exemplified by achieving the status as a Tree City USA city for 38 years. Among the many things that make the City special is its physical environment—the urban forest— consisting of tree-lined streets, abundant parks, natural areas, trees in parking lots and framing buildings, flowering trees, trees with swings in backyards, and trees edging streams and ponds cooling the waters for aquatic life. One of the most important responsibilities is to protect these resources and ensure that Boynton Beach will always be a beautiful, healthy, and livable city, long into the future.

The City has a vibrant urban forest that continues to be created, modified, and removed primarily by people, and sustaining it will require ongoing human intervention. The goal of this intervention is a sustainable urban forest— an urban forest that optimizes the benefits of trees while meeting established safety and economic goals. Achieving this requires robust management, diverse funding, adequate staffing, effective policies, and maintenance actions consistent with best practices.

The City of Boynton actively manages the public urban forest consisting of trees in parks, along streets in the rights-of-way, and on other City-owned properties. This effort is supported by the City’s 2020 Climate Action Plan (CAP) which aims to grow “a greener Boynton Beach by enhancing the tree canopy and native plant and wildlife communities.” The CAP identifies Urban Forestry (Strategy C-1.5) as a priority to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions, while achieving co-benefits of public health, economic development, ecosystem protection, and climate resilience. The 2022 Tree Inventory and Report support CAP goals by providing data for the City’s public trees and the guidance for maintaining trees for sustainability and maximizing the associated benefits they provide.

The City completed its first Urban Tree Canopy Assessment in July 2020, documenting a citywide canopy coverage of 16.1 percent, with 7.4 percent of additional plantable land area. The assessment also found that tree canopy is lower in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Following the study recommendations, on September 1, 2020, the City Commission unanimously adopted a citywide goal of planting 3,000 trees per year to increase the tree canopy to 20 percent by 2035 (Resolution R20-091). The City and its partners are actively collaborating to work towards this goal, with the understanding that the private sector will also contribute. The City’s commitment is demonstrated in the Inventory of Trees from Community Greening section.

The City was awarded the 2020 Managing Community Forests grant by the Florida Forest Service, a division of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS). This grant program will help the City develop a realistic strategy to achieve its tree canopy goal and ensure that the City’s investments yield the expected results. This Tree Inventory Summary Report focuses on the public tree inventory data that was collected in 2022 to support the City’s goal of increasing equitable tree canopy cover. Note, additional street trees remain to be inventoried due to the limited budget. The location for these trees is described in Remaining Streets for a Comprehensive Inventory section.

Fill out the form to access the full Boynton Beach Tree Inventory Report