On your walk to your classes or the Gordon Commons, you may have noticed a large wooden board leaning against the wall. There is a long brown cardboard pole, of sorts, reaching up to the top. Around this pole, there are some specks of red, yellow and orange, and as you pass by, you may notice pictures of what might be trees on pieces of paper stapled onto the board. You give it a moment before realizing, “Hey, that was a tree!”
The Vassar Arboretum, in collaboration with the Office of Sustainability and the Environmental Studies program, is celebrating the Centennial of the Vassar Arboretum. These boards are up until Thanksgiving break and placed in Gordon Commons, the Winston Evans Bridge for Laboratory Sciences, across from Retreat and in the Athletics and Fitness Center. In an effort to cultivate gratitude and awareness around the extensive amount of nature that lies on campus, this celebration of 100 years of the Arboretum encourages students to write down anything the trees remind them of. On these boards, you will find leaves describing a favorite tree species, a beloved tree on campus, a fond memory about a tree, what they like about trees—many said hammocks, climbing and shade—and so much more. Occasionally, an intern from the Office of Sustainability will be around to hand out a limited edition “I Love Trees” womp-womp sticker to those who share their thoughts on the tree. With each addition of a “tree story” written on the face of a paper leaf, the once bare trunk and twigs become lush with multicolored leaves. Kenneth Foster, director of the Office of Sustainability, stated, “It’s been great to see so many comments put up on the boards using the leaf-shaped pieces of paper!”
Vassar is known for being a beautiful campus, a campus that is vibrant green in the summer and breathtakingly colorful in the fall. Ever since Vassar’s establishment, people have been committed to creating a verdant campus—even Matthew Vassar himself planted trees on campus and encouraged others to do the same. Since 1869, each graduating class has planted a tree, a tradition that is now 156 years old and 156 trees richer. The arboretum was formally established in 1925 by Edith Roberts, a professor of botany, Emma Chamberlain Zehe of the Class of 1875, and the Class of 1875. The Arboretum’s structure and design were meticulously thought out by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, who had famously worked on the White House’s East Garden, the J. Pierpont Morgan Library, and Yale University, among other prominent landmarks. She decided that the campus itself should immortalize Vassar’s commitment to sustainability and ecocentricity. The trees planted would be dedicated to the upkeep of native and foreign tree species so that the campus could serve as an educational center when it came to trees and dendrology. From the start, the Arboretum housed tree species from all over the world.
Since 2012, Vassar College has been a certified Tree Campus of the United States. Partners of Tree Campus USA are committed to promoting sustainability and nature in urban settings and fostering an ecologically conscious mindset among the community. Furthermore, five years ago, the campus Arboretum reached a Level II status on the Arbnet Accredited Arboretums. The qualifications for becoming a Level II arboretum depend on having a minimum of 100 unique tree species, planted with purpose and maintained with certain regulations.
There are now over 2,200 trees on the campus—194 of them are Arboretum specimens of 171 unique species. The College will only continue expanding its arboretum efforts. Currently, the Arboretum Committee focuses on mitigating the abundance of invasive species and their effects, maintaining overall canopy health, editing and evaluating existing and proposed landscaping and promoting the ecosystem services provided to students and faculty on campus by having many and multiple kinds of trees and greenery. These actions will not only add to the aesthetic of the college but also help significantly with carbon sequestration efforts, a necessary pursuit especially in the face of climate change.
The Tree Stories event gives people the opportunity to step back and appreciate trees: what they have to offer and just how much they change our lives on a daily basis. From being the foundation for our beloved summer hammocks to the backdrop of memorable snowy landscape pictures to sequestering carbon in the community, they are undeniably something to value. Next time you pass by one of these Tree Story structures, take the time to write down something on a little leaf; your voice matters—it helps the tree grow.