Palm Sunday

 with Jules Aurora:

13 News Now (Virginia Beach), Paradise comes at a price: Keeping Virginia Beach’s palm trees alive

If you’ve walked along the Virginia Beach Oceanfront recently, you may have noticed palm trees with brown, decaying branches, some appearing nearly dead. The reason comes down to a combination of winter weather, ocean winds and salt air, according to a local palm tree expert who has been growing and caring for the trees for decades.

John Sweeney, owner of Palm Tree Mart in Virginia Beach, said the back-to-back snowfalls in February caused significant damage to palm trees around the Oceanfront.  “It killed a lot of trees,” Sweeney said. “We had another bad year about eight years ago. We had a lot of trees die.