A project to protect some of the nation’s most popular memorials and Washington’s famous cherry trees is scheduled to begin later this spring, the National Park Service said Wednesday.
The long-awaited project will include the rehabilitation of the seawalls around the Tidal Basin and along the Potomac River through West Potomac Park. Funded through the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, the work will cost $113 million, NPS said.
To begin the project, roughly 140 of the flowering cherry trees between the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial will be removed beginning in late May.
The agency said it will seek to minimize the number of trees that will be disrupted, but up to 300 trees are scheduled for eventual removal during the three-year project.
