Norwich — With the pending demise of the proposed Chelsea Gardens botanical garden in Mohegan Park, the committee overseeing the park said Thursday it wants a coordinated, organized effort to replant “appropriate” trees for the six acres that were cleared in 2015, a move that sparked public criticism of the project.

Tree experts told the committee Thursday that nature already has started the process.

Officials at the Chelsea Gardens Foundation met with the City Council behind closed doors on April 16 and announced plans to dissolve the nonprofit and its 20-year effort to create a botanical garden on 80 acres leased from the city in Mohegan Park off Judd Road just north of the Norwich Rose Garden.

The project suddenly turned controversial in 2015, when the foundation cleared six acres of trees in the area planned as the botanical garden center, which was to have housed a butterfly pavilion, welcome center and educational building along with planned gardens and walkways.

The Mohegan Park Improvements and Development Committee received a report from Norwich Tree Warden Teresa Hanlon and Chris Donnelly, urban forestry coordinator for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, who inspected the area recently.

Hanlon and Donnelly reported good news to the committee, stating that the stumps cut three years ago have sprouted with sufficient growth to indicate they will mature. Donnelly said the combination of oaks and beech sprouts is “a good mixture for the site,” and they were scattered white pine seedlings.

Hanlon and Donnelly also wrote there is no evidence of invasive ground cover in the area. Donnelly recommended not disturbing the area too much as doing so would provide “new opportunities” for invasive plants to take root.

Donnelly recommended planting white pine seedlings in the areas along the temporary dirt roads through the site and other areas where tree regrowth is light.

Mayor Peter Nystrom had purchased 50 pine seedlings and 50 silver maple seedlings to replant in the area. Public Works Director Ryan Thompson said the silver maples need a much wetter area, so they were planted in a floodway field along the Yantic River on New London Turnpike — the former location of Nutmeg Companies, which relocated out of the flood zone.

“We can proceed with the planting of the donated pine trees in this area,” Hanlon wrote to the committee.

Thompson said the pines were planted in a cleared area on the property and also said city officials have a draft of the lease release and the official process to terminate the lease is moving forward.

Thompson said once the property is released, the committee will need to coordinate the planting, to make sure eager volunteers do not plant the wrong types of trees in the area. Alderman Samuel Browning offered to donate $100 worth of tree seedlings for the area as well.

Butternut Drive resident Charles Evans, a property abutter, led the effort to fight the project, including filing a court challenge that was dismissed in New London Superior Court. Evans did not attend Thursday’s meeting, but earlier said whether to replant should not even be an issue. He said Chelsea Gardens publicly stated the foundation would replant the trees if the project failed.

But Browning said the foundation officials told the City Council it does not have money to replant the area.

Evans agreed with Browning’s plan to replant the trees to give the area a head start to forest regrowth.

“Replant the trees,” Evans wrote in an email response to The Day. “Give the park a jump start on what was destroyed. To allow any other outcome to occur would be to use the same standard of care that was used to get us here. Ignoring and hoping doesn’t work!”

c.bessette@theday.com