Winter 2005

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Zip 01003

UMass Trees

Books Received

Alumni Photos

Features

A Fruitful Partnership

A New Kind of Farm a New Breed of Farmer

A Spoonful of Sugar

Flower Powerhouse

Cranberry Culture

Trees We Love

Dear One Absent This Long While

Feature

Trees We Love

–Vince Cleary

Illustration by Brian Jenkins “WE ALL DRINK FROM WELLS dug by others,” a friend liked to remind me before his death. The same might be said of the trees on campus. Planted in earlier times, they continue to provide beauty year after year for subsequent generations of UMass Amherst students. Ever since our university was founded during the Civil War, it has been blessed with leaders who care deeply about trees. Professor Samuel T. Maynard is credited with planting those handsome copper beeches in Durfee Garden, circa 1874. Our third president, William S. Clark (1867-79), brought many new Japanese specimens from Hokkaido. These included—both in 1877—the cork tree in the Rhododendron Garden and the katsura tree at Grace Church in Amherst, both now removed. He founded Sapporo Agricultural College on the Massachusetts Agricultural model. His successor in Japan and our tenth president, William Penn Brooks, 1905-06, brought additional Japanese varieties here, including the Japanese elm, 1890, at the southeast corner of South College, the first such tree brought to this country. Frank A. Waugh, 1869-1943, was the first head of the Landscape Architecture department, now over 100 years old. The Waugh Arboretum, covering the entire campus, is named for him. And John T. Ahern, present chair of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning, has recently helped to revive the tradition, discontinued in the 1960s, of planting class trees. Have you looked at any campus trees lately, I mean really looked at them? The editors have selected 20 such beauties, varieties that help to make our campus, this “city in the country” as it has been called, such a pleasing marriage of straight lines and curved forms. Together, they make it the idyllic, beautiful place it is. For an interactive map of the UMass trees, go to http://www.umassmag.com/treemap

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Trees We Love