The Middlebury Landscape

Middlebury is ending the semester awash not only with hard discussions on stress and appropriation, but with a new surge of tree vandalism. Four trees have been vandalized in the last four days. Three this past weekend, 1 pulled up out of the ground by Battell, one by HMKL pulled up and dragged to the […]

Part of my absence from the blog would be teaching my winter term class “Trees and the Urban Forest” again this semester. It’s a great class, in a super rushed sort of way all winter term classes probably are. As you may well be aware, the Emerald Ash Borer is a small exotic insect invading […]

An extremely late spring-not warming up until mid May-left our landscape department short on time. We decided to postpone Arbor Day for a fall celebration, which we are holding next week. Friday, October 10th, starting at 3:00. We’ll start with a tree tour, this time focusing on the 10 (12) oldest trees on campus, but […]

It’s been a gorgeous spring, and we’re celebrating with a huge Arbor Day celebration. Plan on joining us May 14th, details below. But in the meantime… love a tree? share the love. send us photos, poems, and other art about your favorite campus tree. Submit a photo, or post on twitter with #middarborday. submit by may […]

Two  nights, three trees trashed. Once again, all around the Atwater dorms. More and more, I’m convinced that it is either one student, or a small group. As spring creeps along, the damage is getting worse. Based on the pattern of damage, I’m pretty sure the students(s) are in the senior class, and I worry […]

No, not the song by the 22-20’s. The plant vandalism on campus continues. We’re on year four, and I’ve been trying to document all the cases. The tally stands at 62 incidents in the last four years, 10 in 2009-2010, 25 in 2010-2011, 9 in 2011-2012, and 18 so far this school year. Will Henriques […]

Nature can teach us many things. Life, death, love. And Hope, Wisdom, and Compassion. How appropriate the 14th Dalai Lama uses ‘cultivating’, the act of promoting growth, to describe his wish for the dissemination of his main tenants for the human race to strive for. Sogyal Rinpoche, the Buddist author of the Tibetan Book of […]

I make no excuses for not blogging. I’m not one of those super-organized, or super-marketeer landscapers who spends the slow winter writing blog posts to store them for slow release all summer. No, we spent the snowless winter busily pruning more trees in one winter than the previous 3, and my dream list of blog […]

I measure my life in tree plantings. Every time I come home from the Burlington airport, I drive down Dorset street in South Burlington and visit a Blue spruce I planted on a landscape job my first year out of college, 1989. It’s over 40 feet tall now, making me old. A paperbark maple in […]

All the talk around campus seems to be about Avocados. I’d always wondered about them, so I did a little reading. It got racy, I started blushing, and just now finished sputtering my way through the randy history of the buttery fruit. For apparently, with avocados, it’s all about sex. It starts with the name. […]