Turning a New Leaf
BEFORE DUTCHELM disease hit Hanover in the 1960s elms ruled the College. The Green was surrounded on all sides by rows of 100-year-old American elms that stood more than 50 feet tall. But after an invasion of the disease in the 1960s, all that remained of the close to 1,000 elms on campus were about 50 particularly hardy trees.
Today, with the development of disease-resistant varieties, the elms are coming back—sort of.
Last year the College lost two trees during a summer thunderstorm—one elm and one hackberiy—and two new elms went up in their place. The grounds crew planted more than 100 trees in 2007; almost 30 of them were disease-resistant elms.
"The intent is for elms to once again become the predominant tree within the core of campus," says Bill Flynn of the Lebanon, New Hampshire-based landscape architects Flynn + Saucier, which worked to create the Colleges landscape master plan of guiding principles for campus tree-planting. Fundamental to the plan is a preservation of Dartmouth's history.
"When the College was first built, the whole campus was barren," says Flynn. In the 1840s the Hanover Ornamental Tree Association planted elms and maples alternating around the Green. Twenty years later the maples experienced a decline and were replaced with more elms. This was the beginning of what Flynn calls the "historical precedence" of elms, when 19th-century designers used American elms to connect the different elements of campus. When the trees were lost to Dutch elm disease, the maples and oaks that replaced them could not fill this role. "Because they do not grow as tall as elms, they obscure the buildings and weaken the relationship between those buildings and the Green," says Flynn.
The master plan seeks to reconstruct the past by calling for more elms in the historic district of the Green, Baker Lawn and Dartmouth Hall. "The character and identity of the Dartmouth landscape is tied to the elms," says Flynn. "They are symbolic."
They are more than symbolic, however. According to College tree warden David DiBenedetto, elms live longer and grow better in urban conditions than native trees such as the maple.
Disease-resistant elms are much more expensive than traditional trees such as maple or hackberry. Immature 4-foot-tall whips cost $100 to $150 apiece; slightly larger trees run up to $300.
DiBenedetto walks the campus twice a week to look for diseased trees. "You have to have a very involved program if you want elms," says DiBenedetto. The College has decided that it does.
Could the Green looklike this again?
OVERHEARD
"The legislature's rejection of this bill.,.is an importantvictory that will help protect the College's governancefrom inappropriate outside influence." —COLLEGE GENERAL COUNSEL ROBERT DONtN, AFTER THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE REJECTED A PROPOSAL TO REQUIRE STATE OVERSIGHT OF DARTMOUTH CHARTER CHANGES
