Trump plan will destroy DC's 'oldest grove of cherry trees' for golf practice: report

A new Washington Post report says President Donald Trump's golf course redevelopment plan would destroy "Washington's oldest grove of cherry trees," the sole survivors of Japan's original 1910 gift to America.

Photos from Trump's Sunday tour of East Potomac Golf Links showed plans far larger than the government had publicly admitted, the Post said.

The trees — planted in 1910 and more than twice the species' expected maximum age — sit on an area that the plans would raze for a practice facility.

"It's deeply concerning to see that the president is carrying around plans that would essentially eliminate public access to [a] beloved park used by the public for fishing and recreation," Ed Stierli, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, told the Post.

Golf course architect Tom Fazio has said Trump told him to protect the trees. The Post noted that the grove doesn't appear in the plans.

The controversy fits a pattern of Trump projects critics say bypass historic review.

"You have this memorial landscape with a triumphal arch in the middle of it, obscuring the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery and the Lee house," architectural historian Alison Hoagland said of Trump's proposed 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery. "Again, a complete misunderstanding of that landscape and what it was meant to be."

"The National Mall, George Washington Memorial Parkway, and Arlington National Cemetery are among the most visited and most revered public landscapes in the United States," Stierli told NPR. "They deserve protection, not transformation."

"The President and his extraordinary team will redevelop this decrepit golf course in our nation's capital to restore its glamour and prestige," Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said.

A federal court hearing on the East Potomac case is scheduled for Thursday.