It’s a spring tradition: Members of the Great Bend Noon Lions Club spent Saturday morning planting redbud trees in the islands on Broadway Ave.
Lions member Don Halbower said the club has been doing this for over 60 years. Volunteers brought tools and water to replace 23 trees that have died or been hit by vehicles in the past year.

Great Bend has been a “Tree City USA” city since 1981. The City, through its Tree Board, offers community residents rebates for planting trees that are visible to the public. The Eastern Redbud is one of more than 40 species recommended for this area. The Tree Board also has a rebate program to help with the cost of removing a dead tree. Information about the Tree Rebate Program can be found on the City website, www.greatbendks.net.
The Tree Board also gives fourth graders in local schools rebud seedlings of their own to take home and plant.

Through the years
The Eastern Redbud species has been a harbinger of spring in Great Bend for decades.
In 1964, the Great Bend Jaycees sponsored a Miss Redbud pageant.
On April 9, 1967, the Great Bend Daily Tribune mentioned the “gorgeous redbud trees. .. The drive down Broadway is one of the most beautiful you’ll find anywhere.” Later that month, the Tribune reported members of the Blue Birds planted some redbuds in the Broadway islands.
Great Bend native Larry Straub wrote about the redbuds in his 2007 book, “Autumn Corridors,” calling Broadway “a stately boulevard separated by grass-covered medians strategically planted with redbud trees ... It is a beautiful drive in the spring, when the trees are in full bloom.”
But it is the Great Bend Noon Lions who have made planting and trimming the redbud trees on Broadway their legacy project for decades.