Boston Flora

Tag: Elm Trees

  • Thursday, March 8, 6:00 pm – A Great Green Cloud: The Rise and Fall of the City Elms

    Decades before Olmsted parks, Yankee villagers planted elm trees on their streets and commons to forge a union of rus and urbe, i.e. the rustic and the urban. The trees brought about “a kind of compromise between town and country,” observed Charles Dickens, as if each had met the other halfway and shaken hands upon it. The result was that lost masterpiece of American urbanism, “Elm Street.” Thomas J. Campanella, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the University of North Carolina, will explore elm culture in the U.S., and how our love affair with this giant nearly brought it to the edge of disappearance, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s New Directions in EcoPlanning Annual Lecture on Thursday, March 8, beginning at 6 pm . Reception to follow, free and open to the public.  Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage. Supported by a gift from Michael Dyett (AB ’68, MRP ’72) and Heidi Richardson.

  • Garden Club of the Back Bay Holiday Wreaths – Saving the Elms

    One mission of The Garden Club of the Back Bay is to beautify the neighborhood, and one historic aspect of the neighborhood is its majestic elms.  As we know, the elm tree population has been decimated by Dutch elm disease, a fungal disease spread by the elm bark beetle.  For many years, the Garden Club has helped fund the inoculation of elm trees, through grants to The Friends of the Public Garden.  This is not inexpensive.  A single application cost between $200 – $300 in the 1980’s.  Thirty years of inflation, naturally, has taken the price, depending on the size of the tree, to the $1,000 range.  In 2009, we gave $4,000 to inoculate trees between Massachusetts Avenue and Charlesgate East.

    Without our fund raising efforts, including the Holiday Wreath project, this financial assistance would not be available.  Please remember the elms as you decide to purchase one of our exquisite wreaths or our full, extra large poinsettia plants.  To order, click here.