NJ just banned a tree I’ve hated my whole life — and I’m fine with it

My friend Gerry lives in Pennsylvania and every spring, without fail, he posts the same message. Cut them down. Get them out of your yard. The best way to prune a Bradford pear tree, he says, is with a single horizontal cut through the trunk as close to the ground as possible.

I laughed when I read it this year. Then I thought about last weekend.

I was on a bike trip along the JAM trail in Delaware — beautiful ride, runs near a landfill. At one point I caught a smell and figured, well, that's the landfill doing what landfills do. I kept riding. The smell stayed with me longer than it should have. A few miles later I looked up and saw them. White flowering trees, lining the trail in both directions. Bradford pears in full bloom.

It was not the landfill.

New Jersey just banned them. Signed into law on Governor Murphy's final day in office, the Invasive Species Management Act officially designates the Bradford pear — along with 29 other invasive plants — as prohibited species in the Garden State. No more propagation. No more sale. No more distribution.

I cover a lot of NJ bans. Leaf blowers. Fire pits. Plastic bags. Gas stoves. I am not always thrilled. This one? This one I am completely fine with.

What you're smelling on your commute right now

If you have been outside this week and caught a smell you could not quite place — something between a fish market and a middle school locker room — you have already met the Bradford pear. The trees are everywhere in New Jersey right now, covered in white blossoms that look genuinely beautiful from a distance. Then the wind shifts.

Native to Asia, Bradford pears were brought to the U.S. in the early 1900s as part of a breeding program to make domestic pears resistant to disease. Somewhere along the way, landscapers and developers discovered they grew fast, looked good in parking lots and strip mall medians, and required almost no maintenance. Corporate landscapers loved them. They planted them everywhere — shopping centers, apartment complexes, highway medians, suburban developments up and down the state.

The problems came with time. Bradford pears have brittle wood that splits apart in storms, putting cars and structures underneath them at risk. Their dense canopy blocks sunlight and chokes out native plants underneath. The fruit causes digestive problems for birds that eat it. And they spread — aggressively — crowding out native trees and shrubs that actually belong here.

They look nice. They smell terrible. They are bad for everything around them. And New Jersey just decided it has had enough.

What the law actually does — and what it means for your yard

The Invasive Species Management Act does not require you to rip a Bradford pear out of your yard tomorrow. If you have one on your property, it can stay for now. What the law prohibits — starting 13 months after enactment — is propagating or importing these species. The sales and distribution ban kicks in at 49 months, giving nurseries and growers time to transition their inventory.

So if you go to your local garden center this spring and ask for a Bradford pear, you should already be hearing no. If you are not, ask why.

The law also creates a permanent New Jersey Invasive Species Council to guide policy going forward and to update the prohibited list as new species meet the threshold. This is not a one-time fix — it is a framework. That matters.

The full list — 30 plants now prohibited in New Jersey

The Bradford pear gets the headlines, but it shares this list with 29 other species that have been doing quiet damage to New Jersey's landscape for years. A few worth knowing:

Running bamboo — if you have a neighbor who planted bamboo as a privacy screen, you already know this one. It spreads underground and shows up in places you did not invite it. Now prohibited.

English ivy — beautiful climbing vine on old brick buildings, absolutely devastating to trees and native ground cover. Now prohibited.

Japanese barberry — the spiky ornamental shrub that is in roughly half the landscaping in suburban New Jersey. Creates tick habitat. Now prohibited, with limited exceptions for specific sterile cultivars.

Tree of heaven — the fast-growing weed tree that sprouts through sidewalks and along every highway embankment in the state. You have seen it everywhere. Now prohibited.

Winged burning bush — the bright red fall shrub that has been a landscaping staple for decades. Spreads into natural areas and crowds out native plants. Now prohibited.

Multiflora rose — the thorny invasive that has taken over field edges and roadsides across South Jersey. Now prohibited.

The full list runs to 30 species. Some are familiar. Some you have probably planted yourself without knowing what they were. The NJDEP is required to publish a full guide with identification resources and native alternatives within the first year of the law.

READ ALSO: NJ already banned this — and your lawnmower could be next 

The one ban I'm actually okay with

Here is the thing about most NJ bans. They tend to come from Trenton deciding it knows better than you do about how to live your life. The leaf blower you need to do your yard. The gas stove you cook on every night. The fire pit you built for the family. There is a pattern and it is exhausting.

This one is different. This is not the government telling you what kind of appliances to use or how to run your small business. This is the state protecting its own landscape from species that are actively damaging it — species that were introduced here through commercial decisions made decades ago without anyone thinking through the long-term consequences.

New Jersey has a million acres of Pine Barrens. It has a Pinelands National Reserve, a Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer, wild and scenic rivers, Delaware Bay marshes, barrier island ecosystems. All of it is worth protecting. The Bradford pear was not planted here to serve any of that. It was planted because it was cheap, grew fast, and looked decent in a strip mall parking lot.

My friend Gerry in Pennsylvania has been saying this for years. Cut them down. Get them out. The best pruning tool is a chainsaw and the will to use it.

New Jersey just picked up the chainsaw.

About time.