Vilnius: Important changes underway to save mature trees

Vilnius is taking significant steps to protect its mature trees, recognizing them as invaluable assets to the urban environment. Despite the city's green spaces, which cover over 60% of its territory, and the planting of more than 64,000 trees in the last seven years, preserving established trees presents a growing challenge.

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Even one lost mature tree is a huge loss for the city – its value cannot be quickly restored.

Factors such as compacted soil, hard surfaces, heat islands, prolonged droughts, and temperature fluctuations stress urban trees. While most inventoried trees in Vilnius are in good condition (nearly 89%), with about 8% in satisfactory condition, even the small percentage of trees in poor or unsatisfactory condition represents thousands of individual losses. The city aims to ensure mature trees remain healthy for as long as possible, as losing even one mature tree is considered a major loss whose value cannot be quickly restored.

"Every tree we lose is a signal for us to seek better solutions – from new planting technologies to more responsible design and maintenance," said Vilnius Vice Mayor Andrius Grigonis. He noted that many trees in the city center were planted decades ago during the Soviet era, when understanding of urban tree needs and growing conditions was limited. Consequently, many now grow in difficult conditions, surrounded by compacted soil, underground utilities, and hard surfaces.

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Every tree we lose is a signal for us to seek better solutions – from new planting technologies to more responsible design and maintenance.

To address this, Vilnius will adopt an advanced tree-planting technology using structural boxes for new trees, particularly on streets with compacted soil, hard surfaces, and heavy traffic. This system provides a larger, uncompacted soil volume beneath hard surfaces, allowing roots to grow more freely, absorb water and oxygen better, and making trees more resistant to drought and urban stress. This also protects pavement and street surfaces. Furthermore, the municipality will now involve arborists from the initial stages of designing paths and streets, including ongoing reconstruction projects, to assess existing greenery and planned solutions.

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This system allows for the formation of a larger, uncompacted soil volume under hard surfaces, so the roots can grow more freely, absorb water and oxygen better, and the trees become more resistant to droughts and urban loads.