Greenfield has some beautiful trees, but they are mostly on private land, either in the yards of stately homes, or the fine oaks near Greenfield Savings Bank.
It wasn’t always so. A century ago, the streets were lined with tall elms. The agriculturists of Greenfield understood land and plants and they knew the elm was a sensible tree for town planting. The branches reached upward, arching over streets and homes, and the roots went deep. The small leaves cast a pleasant, open shade. Then Dutch Elm disease wiped them out.
They were replaced with Norway maples. Maybe those were sold by an exceptional salesman, or perhaps by then, the town planners had forgotten how trees grow. Norway maples have surface roots that push up sidewalks, and their dense shade discourages anything growing under them. Being prolific seed-producers, they spread into surrounding lands as an undesirable invasive species.
Now the Norway maples are being replaced, and it’s often pitiful to see the struggles of the new trees. It’s hard to imagine any tree wanting to grow in that little strip of ground along the street. The roots are confined, receive no oxygen through the adjacent pavement, and are often hacked-at by the DPW as it services the utilities.
The branches have no place to go since, unlike the lost elms, the branches of most of the planted trees grow sideways, running into the streets and buildings before being sliced away. Some grow upward, running into the utility lines before being hacked-off. The grotesque shapes of the trees along Chapman Street are simply sad.
Part of the problem seems to be that the caretakers of our trees, the DPW, doesn’t seem to know how to care for the land it has responsibility for. Perhaps it’s because DPW is staffed by engineers who view “soil” as a building material rather than a living system, or perhaps trees and soil are so far down their list of priorities, that they are like last-born children who never get the good toys.
Trees, and the soil they grow in, are dynamic living entities, not items like park benches and street lamps that one simply puts in and then ignores. Types of trees must be carefully chosen for their sites, both for the space they will occupy and for the type and amount of soil available. “One size fits all” does not work, and trees are no more interchangeable than people.
There is enough variety available among trees that there is one that will thrive on virtually every site, and there really are trees that will grow upward rather than outward. Greenfield simply doesn’t plant them. Partly, that’s because the town works from a short, generic list of “town trees,” and partly because the best-suited trees aren’t amenable to “balled and burlap” propagation, so they can’t be stored like those sorry, withering trunks behind the DPW building. Trees need strategic pruning. The multiple branches of those lindens on Main Street are just going to pull the trunks apart because the bad branch angles were never corrected when they were younger. And whose idea was it to put those sweetgums near Hope and Olive? Sweetgum simply isn’t winter-hardy here.
The other lands that the town owns seldom fare better. The only maintenance that can be relied upon is mowing, and that is sometimes done savagely. Check out the shattered stumps behind the swim area where the overzealous mowers went at the trees and shrubs. Or visit the back of Murphy Park, where things are shoved to the edge of the cliff, leaving erosion slides below. Or visit the “landscaping” of the town parking lot behind Wilson’s, where whatever organic soil was once there has been carried off by erosion.
The loosely-termed Conservation Lands are even worse. With no budget, and no plan, to maintain them, they are resources left to languish. Some are donated by the well-intentioned, in the vain hope that they will be cared for. The town paid good money for others, like the Nims Tree Farm Land, before abandoning it to become an impenetrable breeding ground for invasive species that then spread to plague the adjacent woodlands and waterways.
Greenfield sits on some of the best soil in the state, and has a long history of agricultural proficiency. We deserve better. Remember that the town-owned lands of Greenfield ultimately belong to us, the citizens of Greenfield. So the next time you see a street tree suffering, or see a piece of town land being neglected, I encourage you to contact DPW director Don Oulette, or the Mayor’s office. It doesn’t hurt to have more eyes watching out for the greenery of Greenfield, or to remind the people who have the responsibility for our land that we care what happens to it.
John Blasiak lives in Greenfield.