You can’t take home the red brick streets, cut limestone curbs or expansive front porches from the majestic Old West Lawrence neighborhood.

But you can steal an idea or two about some of the stately green giants that have stood sentry just west of downtown for more than a century.

“We’re hoping that’s just what people will do — just really fall in love with one tree or another and say, ‘I want one at my house,'” said Pat Lechtenberg, who is organizing a tour of the neighborhood’s trees. “A honey locust is not unusual, but a 100-year-old honey locust is.

“If people are planting a tree, they can see baby trees in the garden centers and nurseries. But if they want to see what the tree will look like grown up, they need to go into this older neighborhood.”

Lechtenberg is leading the tour project, an educational effort of the Extension Master Gardeners of Douglas County. The group’s 250 volunteers are trained to help people understand, enjoy and cultivate plantings in their chosen environments.

The Old West Lawrence Tree Tour is among the organization’s latest projects. On Saturday, master gardener Marie Willis and Bruce Chladny, horticulturist for K-State Research and Extension in Douglas County, each will lead 45-minute tours through portions of the neighborhood, a district that long has been home to prominent Lawrence residents and today is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

But instead of focusing on the restored homes and their period details, Willis and Chladny will direct people’s eyes to the trees: hickories, black walnuts, even a single Dawn redwood planted in 1946 after Harvard University horticulturists feared that the fernlike hardwood species might become extinct.

“Everybody travels to California to see a redwood,” said Lechtenberg, a master gardener. “All people need to do here is to go to Old West Lawrence.”

Pearl Martin-Eagle, 12, left, and her friend Nila Mason, 14, walk home through Old West Lawrence after a shopping trip downtown. Tours of the neighborhood's trees will be sponsored Saturday by the Extension Master Gardeners of Douglas County.

Saturday morning’s tours begin at 8:30, 9, 9:30 and 10. At 11 a.m. Chladny will discuss selection and placement of trees for home landscapes. All of the tours start at the corner of Eighth and Louisiana streets.

The event is part of master gardeners’ efforts to celebrate Lawrence’s 150th birthday. The organization received a grant from the Lawrence Sesquicentennial Commission to help finance the work.

People interested in the landscaping and history of nearby Buford M. Watson Jr. Park are invited to events Friday night:

• 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.: Park tours led by Crystal Miles, landscape supervisor for Lawrence Parks and Recreation, which manages the park southwest of Sixth and Kentucky streets.
• 7 p.m.: Discussion of the history of the park, a filled-in ravine, by historian Katie Armitage. The discussion will be in the park’s gazebo, and visitors are asked to bring lawn chairs or blankets.