Recycling Old Portsmouth Tree Tales |
HISTORY MATTERS
The recent demise (some might say “assassination) of the century-old copper beach at
Sometimes the tree itself is famous. This writer remembers the copse of trees at the high-water mark of the Confederate forces at
Brewster also recalled a handsome
Feeding the Whipple tree
Barbara Ward sympathizes with the plight of the
“There are trees we have lost over the years,” Ward says. “There used to be two big elms in front of the house. And we’ve already been told by the arborist that one of our larch trees is very close to the end of its life.”
Two years ago the Moffatt-Ladd House also had problems with a tall ash tree. Its roots were intertwined around the corner of their 18th century warehouse building. A decision was made to remove the tree rather than cut away so many of its roots to protect the building that the tree was at risk of falling and endangering museum visitors.
“You can’t save every one. When I read what the
Having lost elms, larches, ash, and pine trees, the stewards of the nonprofit Moffatt-Ladd House know that eventually the Whipple Tree too will die. There has been discussion of planting a new horse chestnut and each spring seedlings from the Whipple Tree are sold to visitors as part of a spring fundraiser.
“We work with Northeast Shade Tree and really go to a lot of trouble to keep our tree alive and healthy and well-cared for,” Ward says. “It is fertilized every year.”
“As the horse chestnut grows,” Ward explains, “it naturally hollows it self out. So all of the nutrients come up through the tree very close to the bark. So the tree remains very healthy – lush and lots of horse chestnuts and leaves – but you have the problem that the weight gets to be too much for the tree. So that’s why we have extensive cabling in the tree and we redid a lot of it last year.”
“We think about our tree every single day,” Ward says. “To me it’s very intimately connected to the house.”
CONTINUED BELOW
Shade trees come and go
Giant trees once dominated
Urban trees are especially precious. Modern statistics suggest that the average downtown tree lives only seven years. You can tell a lot about a city by its ornamental trees. Nineteenth century
Long after the war, around 1792, Brewster tells us, Governor John Langdon introduced the first
Brewster, the longtime editor of the Portsmouth Journal, recalled a massive elm on
Even before the Civil War the first of the early
Brewster wrote: “But beauty soon faded. The trees ran up to an elegant taper for a time; but the frost or the lightning in a few years nipped their tops. Their decapitated trunks, shorn of every vestige of beauty, sending out a seven-fold number of new shoots, had more the appearance of the fabled hydra than of the produce of
Henry Richards is often remembered as a great tree planter in
Local ale tycoon Frank Jones, though not known for his philanthropy, had a passion for ornamental trees and installed them near his many properties. Since Jones owned much of the area -- from his Maplewood Farm to the Rockingham and Wentworth hotels, the public benefited, and
It’s not easy being green
Nature and nurture continued to conspire against the city’s ornamental trees. Those grand trees not destroyed by Dutch elm disease, were often manicured to death by man. Trimmed back by new sidewalks, carved around telegraph and telephone wires, gouged by horse carts, smothered by automobiles, and sacrificed to new buildings and parking lots.
The tourism renaissance in
In the 1940s and 50s, Loughlin says, “there was hostility toward anything green” among city officials. That changed, he says, with the redesigned downtown streetscape in the 1970s that fostered the modern attitude that urban trees are an essential part of the aesthetic of the city.
Loughlin’s committee meets monthly to oversee new plantings and respond to citizen requests to cut down trees on city-owned land. “We turn down a fair number of requests to remove trees,” Loughlin says. “If it’s a healthy tree, we don’t allow it to be removed.”
“We take it one tree at a time,” he says. “It’s a balancing act. There’s a constant tension between the tree roots, the sidewalks, the wires, the shade, the light, the parking spaces, Every time we plant a tree in urban
Loughlin commends the city for its work in recent years and for providing “adequate funding” to every request by the volunteer committee for new plantings. The city looks better than any time in the 20th century, he says. Keeping greenery part of the cityscape, mean constantly replacing dead and dying trees with new ones that, when carefully managed, Laughlin believes can live for at least 25 years.
“They are not going to live forever,” says Loughlin, who has been called a modern day Johnny Appleseed for his private work both growing and planting trees across the city. He wraps up by reciting a quotation printed on his office stationery that comes from landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852). Downing wrote:
“There is not a village in
Copyright © 2012 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Robinson’s history column appears in the Portsmouth Herald every other Monday and exclusively online at his independent Web site SeacoastNH.com. Robinson is the author of
READER RESPONSE:
Dennis Robinson's otherwise thoughtful column on trees in Portsmouth history took a nose dive into the hopper in the first sentence when he called the cutting of the South Church European copper beech an "assassination." Was he just trying to be clever, or was he that ignorant of the years the congregation spent looking for alternatives to cutting the tree? Later in the column Robinson described the Moffatt-Ladd House's efforts to save an ash tree that was undermining a corner of their building. They eventually had to cut down the ash tree. Was that an assassination? A ritual slaughter? Horticultural euthanasia? The world will never know, because Robinson didn't treat us to any colorful descriptions of that event. Nor should he have. The Moffatt-Ladd house staff and trustees studied every feasible alternative to removing their tree. So did South Church. Assassins were not part of the process.
MY REPLY: To Everything There is a Season
Just as the South Church members carefully considered the fate of the copper beech that has been recently removed from their churchyard, I also carefully considered the choice of words in my follow-up feature on the history of shade trees in Portsmouth last Monday. The choice to use the word “assassination” was not random. While my article was largely supportive and indeed, written in defense of the church’s decision to remove the tree, it was necessary to take into account the response of others in the community. Summarizing other views, I think, is far from the “yellow journalism” that a recent church member claimed in these pages. The fact is that, while interviewing people during my research, a number of knowledgeable “tree people” were “on the fence” about the decision. While newspapers all too often hyperbolize public reaction, community response is also news. The phrase used in my article does not say that the decision by the church was wrong, but only acknowledges that there are those who question it. The church’s painstaking decision was also reported and, I believe, honored in the reporting. What is clear is that trees are mortal and that a great many of the city’s oldest downtown trees are located on non-city property and their fate is in the hands of their owners. My wife and I recently “assassinated” the one and only tree on our home property (less than a tenth of an acre) at significant cost because we were told by tree professionals that its days were numbered and our house and visitors were in potential jeopardy. Not all our neighbors agreed and it was a sad day for us all. The first take-home lesson of this incident for the public, I hope, is that if citizens want to preserve old city trees, they need to actively work with and support the organizations on whose properties the trees now live. The second lesson is that, no matter what we do, all things must pass. The message for the property-owners where these great trees live is that, even when you do your best, it’s still “arborcide” and the community will mourn loudly, as is their right. And when they do, the papers will report it, as is their mission. -- JDR