Select Board members this week returned to a topic that first came up at their Nov. 21 meeting—planting trees or placing benches as memorials on town land. Town Administrator Tim Bragan presented the board with two draft policies—one that would regulate such memorials and another that would ban them. After considerable discussion, board members concurred on banning further individual memorials from the Common.
Chair Rich Maiore asked Bragan to prepare a policy to that effect, and the board will vote on it at its next meeting. As for town lands other than the Common, the Select Board deferred a decision until other groups with control over those parcels have had a chance to comment. Those groups include the schools, Conservation Commission, and the Parks and Recreation Commission.
The Select Board packet included emails from both Bill Calderwood, as chair of the Elm Commission, and JC Ferguson as tree warden. Both opposed planting memorial trees, citing problems with selecting a species suitable for a public location and also problems with watering, mulching, and disease. In his opinion, Calderwood wrote, “[Any] memorial tree should be planted either on private land or in a designated cemetery.” Benches, he wrote, could be managed by a separate policy.
The Select Board’s discussion this week focused on the difficulty of deciding who might get permission to place a memorial on town land, given that such space is limited. Member Don Ludwig said, “I think it’s a slippery slope. I’m not in favor because it’s very hard to manage, and it creates, as somebody said, a maintenance nightmare.”
Neither the Select Board members nor the town administrator seemed certain how many memorial trees or benches currently exist on town lands. But Bragan explained that prohibiting more benches would not impact those that are already in place.
Remembering Harvard memorial trees from the past
Friends and family members have been planting trees in honor of Harvard residents for nearly 70 years, probably a good bit longer. In 2002 the Garden Club’s Conservation Committee published the booklet “Ancient, Historic, and Notable Trees of Harvard,” which ends with a list of more than a dozen memorial trees in town.
In 1961 the Garden Club planted a Norway spruce on town land next to the Common to honor Clara Endicott Sears, a charter member of the club and founder of Fruitlands Museum.
A yellowwood tree that once stood by the main entrance to the Bromfield School was planted in honor of Edith Rantoul, whose family established the Rantoul Trusts to benefit the town.
In 1997, local Boy Scouts planted a Japanese zelkova tree on the Common in memory of Charles Waite—police officer, town constable, and Scout volunteer.
The Historical Society planted two kousa dogwoods near the Unitarian Church to honor Elvira Scorgie a few years before she died in 1993. Besides writing down much of Harvard’s history, Scorgie also made history by being among the first Harvard women who registered to vote in 1920.
In 2017, a blight-resistant elm was planted near the library in memory of Dorothy Andrews, botanist and longtime science teacher at Bromfield, who died in 2015.
These are only a few of the Harvard residents honored or memorialized by trees. Some of those trees still survive; others do not. Trees, like humans, are mortal.
