The Great North Temple Tree Poisoning of 2024 will live long in the memories of the west-siders who live close to the major road.

But, last week, Salt Lake City officials said efforts to plant new trees in the place of the 200 that died are bearing fruit.

About 100 new trees are in the ground along the corridor between 600 West and Redwood Road. Another 100 more will be removed from their wooden planter boxes on the street and placed in the now-healthy dirt by the end of the year.

“To have the trees die was just was really sad,” Fairpark Community Council Chair Jeffery Olson said. “But we were grateful for the city’s response. We’re grateful that they stepped up pretty quickly and they came up with a plan for getting trees back out there while the soil was recovering from the damage that had been done.”

The old trees were lost when a city employee, attempting to kill weeds around the trees’ bases, selected the wrong herbicide — one that’s actually supposed to be used for killing unwanted trees and shrubs.

When those trees died, the Public Lands Department promised to plant more trees than were killed. However, the city can only plant “one or two” more along the street because all the spaces for trees on North Temple are spoken for, department Deputy Director Tyler Murdock said at a Salt Lake City Council meeting last week.

The department will plant at least 240 additional trees throughout the neighborhood, with significant greenery on deck for the Folsom Trail, Madsen Park and 1000 West.

Thirty new trees are already in place at Cottonwood Park, too.

The west side, as a whole, has far fewer mature trees than eastern neighborhoods. The smaller canopy contributes to poorer air quality and the urban heat island effect, the phenomenon in which cities are hotter than surrounding countryside because of their lacking greenery.

“We’re very thankful of the efforts from the city to make up for that mistake. It was an unfortunate thing. It wasn’t on purpose,” council Chair Alejandro Puy said at the meeting, which was hosted at the Utah State Fairpark. “It really means a lot to this community.”

The city has also planted 200 of a planned 550 rose bushes along North Temple. Public Lands picked the roses because they’ve proven to be resilient in Salt Lake City, Murdock said. Olson is excited about the bushes; he believes they’ll lend a special quality to the road.

West-side council member Victoria Petro did have some concerns about the new, young greenery and whether the city would be able to adequately protect the plants from vandalism, human waste and garbage like broken bottles. Homelessness, drug use and criminal activity have often been an issue along the corridor.

“I love this, want this, believe that we should have this,” Petro said. “I like the plans conceptually, but what’s the plan for implementation practically?”

Murdock said there are now more eyes on the corridor than there were a couple of years ago. A crew of contractors does daily trash sweeps and city employees with Public Lands and the Urban Services Division are often working along the road as well.

Only one of the 100 boxed trees has been lost to vandalism since they were placed there in 2024, Murdock said.

Olson hopes the new greenery will be nurtured and cared for. His dream is that North Temple offers a beautiful gateway to downtown when visitors are coming in for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Salt Lake Temple reopening next year and the Winter Olympics in 2034.