500 trees coming to Bethel Park

Among the budget amendments, department reports, and other routine business before the Morganton City Council on Monday came an announcement that put a little more “nature” back into Nature’s Playground.

Five hundred trees are coming to the 15-acre Bethel Park.

Trout Unlimited contributed the 500 young, 4-foot-tall trees. A team of volunteers from Truist Bank will plant them in the park next week.

The park will be closed Sept. 21 and Sept. 22 for tree planting.

For 20 years Bethel Park has undergone improvements, repairs, renovations, and redesigns. But nothing like the work needed after Hurricane Helene literally washed away the popular amenity.

Since that September 2024 generational storm, Bethel Park has been painstakingly redesigned and rebuilt. Stream restoration, bridge replacement, fields graded. It’s a long list.

That reconstruction, coupled with Helene’s winds and floods, destroyed most of the trees on the 15-acre amenity in the eastern part of Morganton. And with those trees went a lot of the natural beauty of Bethel Park.

Bryan Fish, Morganton’s director of the Parks and Recreation Department, announced the gift during a presentation Monday night.

“Trout Unlimited, along with Truist, are going to come in, have the trees delivered, and they're going to spend a day planting all those trees,” he said against a backdrop of updated park photographs. “I think they're about 4-foot-tall trees.

“All that remains, in theory, is the new bathrooms down at the large parking lot. We’re checking on those today. (We’re) thinking the first of December the bathrooms will be complete.

“It's wonderful. It's beautiful. It looks nothing like it did before, and obviously with that, the footprint changed. … It's almost done. It looks great. It's heavily used, and it's been an experience. It's been worth waiting for.”

Five hundred trees later, Bethel Park will be another step closer to living up to Morganton's promise of Nature's Playground.