Who has the biggest tree in Olympia? Nonprofit kickstarts neighborhood competition
Lou Ellyn Jones stood beneath the outstretched branches of a Western redcedar in the corner of her backyard in northeast Olympia, recounting the peace it brought her during the COVID-19 pandemic. She would read Mary Oliver poems to the giant, whose base measures more than 20 feet in circumference.
“I would come out here all the time, you know, just talk to talk to her,” Jones said.
Despite its stature, the tree is falling behind on the leaderboard for the tallest in the city. Local nonprofit Restoring Earth Connection secured an Inspire Olympia grant to help document the largest tree in each neighborhood, as well as the largest of each species.
The effort has become a competition between tree enthusiasts, as well as a chance for environmentalists to spread awareness about the importance of green spaces in neighborhoods.
Lynn Fitz-Hugh, founder of Restoring Earth Connection, said the effort is based on The Last 6,000 campaign in Seattle that aimed to preserve the city’s dwindling tree canopy. She said there are a lot more trees in Thurston County than Seattle, but she’s also “painfully aware” of increasing development that leads to the loss of big trees.
“Seattle lost a huge number of trees over a relatively short period of time while they were doing development,” Fitz-Hugh said. “We’re heading into development. And so, you know, part of this is, how do we keep our trees here in our community?”
The nonprofit has trained tree ambassadors to go door to door to hand out information on the benefits of trees, and to help identify the largest ones in each neighborhood. Among the benefits listed: In 2019, Olympia street trees alone removed 2,500 pounds of air pollutants. And they sequester more than 420,000 pounds of carbon per year.
“The public needs more information about trees so that we honor and preserve the trees that we have,” she said.
Fitz-Hugh said the nonprofit was nervous at first to train folks to go door to door and speak with strangers about their property. However, she’s found that those with the largest trees are very proud of them and more than willing to show them off.
“They know that people in the neighborhood come by and sort of look at the tree, and they know they’re sort of known for their big tree, and so they really do have pride in their trees, which is nice to see,” she said.
It quickly became a competition between residents to see who has the biggest tree of each big-tree species: Western hemlock, coast redwood, Douglas fir, Western redcedar, Sitka spruce, Ponderosa pine, Mountain hemlock, Red alder, Pacific/Western yew, Alpine larch, Western juniper, paper birch, black cottonwood, Pacific madrone, Pacific dogwood and vine maple.
The effort doesn’t include trees in public areas such as city-owned parks.
Tree ambassadors have been helping residents measure and register their trees in an online database to keep track of who’s winning, and how many big trees there are in Olympia. Fitz-Hugh said more than 300 trees have been registered so far, and she’s hoping to at least double that number before the end of June.
You can register your tree on your own on the Restoring Earth Connection website and their form.
The Garfield cat tree
What is technically the largest tree documented for the competition so far is a coast redwood on the city’s west side in Nancy Curtis’ front yard. Though it splits into four large trees, its singular shared trunk measures 30 feet in circumference.
From afar, the four trees appear to converge into two points. Students at Garfield Elementary School call it the cat tree for its resemblance to cat ears towering over the neighborhood.
If we’re getting specific, you could say Curtis’ tree is cheating. There’s another home in Olympia with twin coast redwoods, one that measures 22-feet-6-inches in circumference. Fitz-Hugh said different people feel differently about which is the biggest, so they’re currently both listed as the winner in their category.
Curtis said she moved to Olympia in 1980 and had her eye on the giant redwood immediately. Thirty-five years later, in 2015, she bought the property with a 100-year-old farmhouse on it for the tree alone.
She said she may be an eccentric person, but she feels as though there will come a time when old trees are more valuable than housing. Curtis referenced the environmental benefits of trees and how the bigger the tree means the more oxygen it can put out.
“You can knock down a house and rebuild it, but you can’t knock down a tree and rebuild it,” she said.
Curtis said she recognizes her big tree will die someday. She had an arborist check out the tree when she bought the property, and they recommended cabling it for more support. Fitz-Hugh contacted her earlier this year about the tree ambassador program and having her tree measured, and another arborist came to check it out. The tree is in pretty good shape, she learned.
Curtis no longer lives in the home but she rents it out to friends. She said during more difficult times with tenants, she would come sit under the tree and realize “that’s all ephemeral.”
Since buying the property, Curtis has grown an affinity for coast redwoods and has spotted others around town, but none as big as hers.
Keeping Olympia green
Fitz-Hugh said she hopes to make a walking arboretum map with the tree information at the end of the project. That way people can plan walks and other trips that will take them near the trees.
The information also will be shared with the City of Olympia to help update the Urban Forestry Plan. More clear information about trees in the city could help the city protect threatened species and make better planting decisions for areas with fewer trees.
She said another reason for the project is that developers often come into a project and wipe the landscape clean.
“They don’t have to navigate around a tree or whatever. They don’t have to worry about not destroying the roots of the tree,” she said. “And so they’ll build whatever they build, and then they’ll stick a few saplings on there and call it good. And so neighborhoods that have been recently developed, those little saplings that have maybe grown for five years or something, are the only trees that you can find at all.”
Fitz-Hugh said a lot of trees developers choose to plant in place of old native trees often won’t grow to the size of the former trees, and they don’t provide proper shade. Older neighborhoods in the city with properties that haven’t been touched in decades have bigger trees that bring more benefits to people nearby, including lower asthma rates, lower energy bills and less air pollution.
She hopes the project will highlight the benefit of keeping more trees around while encouraging more development, and that maybe it will lead to more protections for trees in development code.
Fitz-Hugh said she’s proud that Olympia has the highest tree density of its neighbors Lacey and Tumwater, and the nonprofit wants to keep it that way.
This story was originally published May 13, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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