The War for the Trees

trees have had as tumultuous a history as the 44 The Alcalde January/February 2008

TREES glorious shade canopies, University itself by tim

ta l i aferro

January/February 2008 The Alcalde 45

Avrel seale

WAR

THE FOR THE On a campus known for its stately oaks and

million — and counting. Recent studies have shown that trees rank among the most influential factors in attracting faculty and retaining students: people associate campus beauty with academic prestige. And so it is that in the midst of a new, $640 million construction boom, the trees are commanding much more respect than they ever have before.

Chapter 1: A History in Eight Paragraphs

I

1863, during the War Between the States, an overzealous Confederate officer named John Magruder, in order to protect the state capital from what he thought was an eminent Union invasion, ordered his garrison to march up College Hill, chop down the ancient trees that covered it, and use the wood to fortify the Capitol. According to legend, only three trees survived: The ones now known as the Battle Oaks were spared so the soldiers could find some shade from the oppressing Southern sun.

In the 145 years since, trees on the University of Texas campus have endured periodic swings from disregard to reverence, from neglect to intensive care. They have often been casualties of expansion, but they also have had many stout defenders. In the last few years, the preservationists have prevailed, and UT currently shows its trees much deference. In the run-up to the north end zone’s double-decking, the University spent more than $700,000 to relocate 16 oak trees standing in the way. It was a remarkable gesture of respect and a far cry from how UT treated trees the t is fabled that in

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last time it expanded the stadium, in 1969. Then, regents chairman Frank Erwin famously ordered the police to arrest student protestors wanting to save the trees and told the bulldozer operators to, “Get the big ones first.” The chairman then clapped as the great old trees were felled.

As a historical rule-of-thumb, trees have fared the worst during construction booms. Those in the way of proposed buildings were rarely spared, regardless of their age or beauty. Those that did survive were often paved around, encircled in concrete and thus condemned to a slow death by suffocation. Whether by ignorance or indifference, trees have had whole sections of their trunks buried, their root systems mangled by utility lines, and the soil surrounding them critically compacted by sidewalks, parking lots, or the heavy rumble of construction equipment.

Despite all these indignities, UT’s trees remain one of its greatest assets. In fact, the trees are unique in that they are the only pieces of University infrastructure that increase in value with age. The 4,823 that shade the campus are worth a combined $26

Photographs of campus taken during its earliest years reveal 40 barren acres. A witness to the 1882 dedication of the original Main Building, then still under construction, wrote that, aside from the structure, “There was nothing else on this hill except a few scattering mesquite trees.”

The first true tree champion to come along was Judge James Benjamin Clark. In the 23 years that he worked for UT (1885-1908), Clark served as proctor, dean of students, registrar, business manager, admissions officer, bursar, librarian, secretary of the faculty, regent, and — most importantly from an arboricultural standpoint — building and grounds manager. It was in this capacity that Judge Clark, the man for whom Clark Field is named, made his most lasting impact on the campus. At home in his spare time Clark propagated trees, and the University was often the beneficiary of his efforts. Most of Clark’s work to shade and beautify the young campus was subsequently undone, his elegant sycamores and pecans, English walnuts and hackberries deracinated when they stood in the footprint of expansion.

Similar instances of one-tree-planted-and-two-trees-removed litter campus history. But at least one of his seedlings still stands today, a now-massive mesquite tree just south of the Gebauer Building.

A rare tree-preservation victory came in 1923, when plans for a biology laboratory would have required the removal of the three oldest trees on campus — the ones purportedly spared by Gen. Magruder’s axe men. University tree defenders quickly mustered. Mostly at the urging of students interested in preserving one of the only shady areas on campus and their favorite place

du rendez-vous, the influential chair of the Faculty Building Committee, William J. Battle, convinced the regents to relocate the lab. The oaks were then named for Battle, and over time a legend sprouted that he had saved the oaks by sitting beneath them armed with a piece, though that’s not at all what happened.

In fact it was another tree crusader, former law professor Robert Lynn Batts, who had written Battle to say that the trees should be defended at all cost and offering to do so himself with his shotgun.

But trees found their greatest champion in 1925, in the person of John William Calhoun. As the University comptroller, Calhoun served on the Faculty Building Committee and was a Battle ally.

Calhoun can be called the godfather of the trees, for in the more than three decades that he served the University, he did more to populate the campus with trees than anyone before or since.

Aside from perhaps Paul Cret, no one has so profoundly shaped the look of campus.

Calhoun was no arborist, but he was persistent, and after a few failed tries he managed to launch what is now considered the Live Oak Era, the most consequential period of tree planting in University history. In the spring of 1926, Calhoun made his first ambitious planting — three coastal redwoods that, for all his efforts, did not last long in the arid Central Texas climate.

The comptroller tried again in the fall, planting 12 live oaks in a patch of land just south of Sutton Hall, but the oaks, too, did not survive, and Calhoun cut them at their stumps that winter.

The spring brought some much-needed progress, as new trees grew out of the 12 he’d chopped down. Those oaks remain today and can be identified by a peculiar physical feature: The trees that grew out of the stumps grew in pairs, or, in one case, triplets, so they appear to have two or three separate but equal

From far left: a casualty of the 1969 stadium expansion; student protestors being pulled from the trees; regents chairman Frank Erwin supervising; J.W. Calhoun showing off a sapling; a plate showing the beginning of the Live Oak Era; Calhoun and President Benedict beneath a newly planted oak in 1926; and under the same tree in 1935.

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trunks. Encouraged by the resiliency of the live oaks, Calhoun forged on, planting 620 more of them from 1927 to 1940. The iconic oaks that line the South Mall he planted in 1933, and, in 1937, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the ratifying of the U.S. Constitution, he planted the Constitution Oak. Though the plaque to commemorate the event has long since been lost, the tree still stands, just outside the east entrance to the main building near Clark’s monster mesquite.

Calhoun continued his work on behalf of tress throughout his tenure at UT. In 1937, then recently named interim university president, he convinced the regents to move the planned Carothers Dormitory closer to Whitis Avenue so that several sizable oaks would be spared, trees that to this day anchor the Honors Quad. He spent many hours engineering storm drains to feed individual trees on the campus that he noticed would otherwise be water-starved. One of his most lasting achievements was a meticulous tree inventory he made in 1942. On it he counted 1,068 trees to the campus’ 36 buildings. He noted the location of each with a precision that rivals modern GPS, and he used the map

to help architects and contractors consider existing trees when designing new buildings or updating old ones.

Calhoun died in 1947 having completely transformed the campus from a largely treeless one to one abundant in shade. Two decades later, the University saw fit to honor him for his long service. What UT chose to honor him with was a building in the six-pack that would bear his name. It is one of the crueler ironies of University history that in building Calhoun Hall several of the oak trees he planted were mowed down. Nevertheless, thanks to Calhoun, by the end of the Live Oak Era, the primary point of struggle over trees on the campus had changed from propagation to preservation.

Chapter 2: The Age of Enlightenment Ignorance ranks right up there with bulldozers as trees’ archnemeses. While it’s true that The University of Texas has never boasted of a particularly strong agricultural tradition, some of the tree-health gaffes that groundskeepers have made over the years

have been downright boneheaded: haphazard sidewalk pavings, inconvenient branches hacked off, towering buildings erected just inches away from tree trunks. During the 1960s, when enrollment exploded and students began commuting, UT turned every flat patch of unused space into a parking lot. With an alarming frequency, contractors were permitted to pave right up to and around what strays were spared. Ever since, as those trees have gradually died, the occasional parked car suffers karma’s wrath, when a stiff breeze catches a starved branch and gravity brings it crashing down.

In October 2004 ignorance found its own nemesis in the person of Larry Maginnis, urban forester, tree protector. While developing a university-wide Landscape Improvement Plan, administrators noticed that numerous trees appeared in poor health and suggested that a tree expert be hired to care for them and oversee any future plantings. They found Maginnis in Montana, recently returned from Australia, a young, enthusiastic arborist who grew up working on a tree farm in Pennsylvania, earned a degree in urban forestry from the University of Montana, and had

Above, from far left: The Constitution Oak, planted in 1937, as seen shortly after planting. Looking south down the South Mall in 1941 (compare to current shot on opening pages). The Texas Memorial Museum as seen from San Jacinto St. in 1939. The same view, somewhat zoomed out, in 2005. One of the only remaining Clark trees, this his monster mesquite.

15 years of experience caring for trees in dense cityscapes.

His friends in the industry advised against taking the job. They thought UT’s trees were 15 years past the point of no return. On his visit to Austin, Maginnis saw little to encourage him on the drive in from the airport, but once he saw the stately live oak in front of the Social Work Building he was hooked. He accepted the job and moved to Austin. When he first drove into town, he had more tools for caring for trees in the back of his pickup than did UT’s entire physical plant.

The first order of business was to update Calhoun’s tree inventory. Inspired by Calhoun’s model, Maginnis ordered a private company to conduct a new, digital inventory of campus trees and

Campus Celebri-trees The Pride of Kent: This superrare apple tree, a sixth-generation descendant of the tree that produced the orb that fell onto Sir Isaac Newton’s head and launched the theory of gravity, is what Larry Maginnis calls “his baby.” Only a handful of universities have a Newton tree, and Maginnis has nursed it from its infancy in a 25-gallon pot. He currently keeps the tree on the grounds near his office, where he can daily monitor it and protect it from the many little bugs that like to chew on it. When it’s old enough and big enough, the Newton tree will go next to the ACES building as a sort of living monument to science.

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The Dalai Lama Tree: When the Dalai Lama spoke at UT in September 2005, the University planted a bodhi tree inside the Texas Union atrium on the third floor, in the Presidential Lobby, as a gift to him. The bodhi tree is considered an important symbol because it was under such a tree that Shakyamuni Buddha, then known as Gautama, attained enlightenment some 2,500 years ago. During his visit, the Dalai Lama blessed the tree, a direct descendant of the tree Buddha sat beneath, and greeted the families of donors who established the Dalai Lama Buddhist Studies Endowment in the College of Liberal Arts.

The Battle Oaks: These three native live oak trees, just north of Hogg Memorial Auditorium, are the three oldest of the original 40-acre campus. They were named for William J. Battle after he spoke up on behalf of the students who wanted the trees saved when plans for a new biology lab called for their removal. They are more than 300 years old, and the oldest and largest of the three measures 48 inches in diameter, 60 feet tall, and is worth $28,000. The statue of Barbara Jordan, when completed, will be placed beneath the Battle Oaks.

Littlefield’s Deodar Cedar: When Major George W. Littlefield built his house in 1893 he spared no expense, indulging in the many architectural trappings of the prevailing Gothic revivalist style. But in one significant departure, Littlefield imported a deodar cedar, a tree native to the Western Himalayan region. The tree is the only one of its kind in Austin.

The evergreen’s most distinctive feature is its horizontal branches. In preparation for its installation, Littlefield had the soil in the spot where the tree was to go dug up and replaced with native Himalayan dirt. It stands today on the southwest corner of his property at 24th and Whitis.

The Duren Oak: This century-old live oak was spared the axe and instead built around and made the main event of Almetris Duren Hall’s main plaza. Throughout the two-year construction project, workers had to negotiate around the tree and were prevented from even treading too close to its base. When Duren Hall was completed in 2007, the tree was appraised at $90,000.

The Constitution Oak: In 1937, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, President J.W. Calhoun and the Dames of America organization planted the Constitution Oak near the east entrance to the Main Building. Seven decades later, the plaque intended to commemorate the event has been lost, but the tree itself remains.

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1

2

“Part of my job is ...

I buy cars.”

—Larry Maginnis

UT’s Urban Forester

3

4 Gallery of Horrors: 1) A massive tree limb crushes two cars parked along San Jacinto in front of Simkins. 2) A tree trunk grows around and over steps installed too close to its base. 3) What remains of an oak tree that was encircled in concrete and slowly died. 4) UT’s urban forester Larry Maginnis shows how deeply a tree near the McComb’s School was buried (four feet). It survived. 5) A tree limb blown down during a storm crashes through a solid stone picnic table near Littlefield Dorm. 6) Utility workers trenched too close to this tree, cutting one of its main roots. Unable to hold itself in the ground, the tree toppled over and died. Opposite: An innovative approach to tree health, surrounding it with benches to offer people solace from the heat and the tree a critical root zone and protection from delivery trucks that have chipped away at its bark.

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to appraise and mark each of them. Like Calhoun, Maginnis intended to use the inventory to force contractors to take heed of them and to demonstrate in terms of dollars the opportunity cost to the University of removing or neglecting trees.

It didn’t take long before Maginnis realized that keeping tabs on UT’s 426-acre urban forest would require a staff with tools and trucks and training. One of his first buys was a boom-lift of the sort that telephone companies have so that Maginnis and his men were not forced to climb every tree needing trimming. Then he began visiting every tree on campus, examining each with all the care of a doctor on a house call, and determining which were in the best shape and which needed immediate care.

For each tree, Maginnis and his colleagues created an initial health report, stored in the mapping system’s master database, and with each subsequent maintenance call they supplement the medical history they have for every tree on campus. That database has since allowed Maginnis to carefully schedule maintenance, monitor biotic conditions, and quantify more accurately his budgetary needs.

Over the course of several months, Maginnis and his gang took to undoing much of what transpired during UT’s manic growth in the ’60s and ’70s. The team removed 50 trees that were in such poor health that they represented a danger to people, including one in the parking lot next to Painter Hall that had been paved around and subsequently shed limbs. On the north side of the McComb’s School of Business they discovered a tree that had been buried four feet deep in soil the last time the building had been renovated, a potential deathblow. They exhumed the trunk, and the tree survived.

Near the service drive between Batts Hall and the Graduate School of Business, an oak tree bore the marks of repeated blows from delivery trucks pulling in and out. As part of Batts’ renovation, Maginnis pitched the University on an innovative compromise that would save and protect the tree: widen the service drive but allow the oak an unpaved haven equal to a foot in diameter for every inch of the tree trunk’s girth. He called it the critical root zone and suggested surrounding the zone with park benches, which aside from giving students and faculty a place to sit and enjoy the shade would protect the tree from delivery trucks. UT agreed.

The critical-root-zone formula quickly caught on, and it has become the standard operating procedure in cases where trees and concrete meet. In the same parking lot next to Painter Hall where he removed one tree, Maginnis is lobbying to trade anoth-

er sick tree that would open up a parking space in return for a critical root zone for a third tree that he believes he has a chance of saving. It’s a constant juggling act, doing deals and making trades with Parking and Transportation, the Division of Housing and Food, and other campus players. But for the first time in campus history, Maginnis has started to institutionalize tree care, and it has launched a paradigm shift that has changed the status of trees from afterthoughts to priorities.

Chapter 3: Branching Out, so to speak, or: The Making of a Master Tree Plan When it came time to expand the north end of Darrel K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in 2006, and someone noticed that to do so would mean losing 40 trees, Pat Clubb, vice president for employee and campus services, announced to the many campus powerbrokers in the room: “We’re saving them at all costs.” So the UT System Office of Facilities Planning and Construction, the University’s Project Management and Construction services and Landscape Services, and Maginnis’ gang set about making it happen.

Of the 40, 20 were not worth saving, Maginnis thought, and four more had utility lines running through them. That left 16 live oaks to dig up, wrap with boards, build a cradle for, lift out of the ground with a crane, place on a flatbed semi, and cart off to other parts of campus, where they would be replanted. It was painstaking, delicate, Herculean work that nonetheless had to be done quickly, as it was holding up the stadium project. The trees were scattered around the campus, mostly on the far east side near the stadium, and four were set down in a makeshift tree farm on the lawn next to the LBJ Library fountain, still on their cradles, so that when the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center is ready two can be moved into its courtyard; of the remaining two, one will adorn the new Experimental Sciences Building, the other will be included as part of the Speedway Landscape improvement project.

That saving of 16 has gotten the most attention in the press, but there have been two other significant tree preservation victories in the same period. Thirteen oaks were relocated when construction on the Blanton Museum began in October 2003.

And even before construction commenced on the Almetris Duren Residence Hall in May 2005, the architects decided to design the building around a glorious oak that would occupy the dorm’s central plaza rather than remove it. When Duren Hall opened in the spring of 2007, the tree was appraised at $90,000.

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From left: One of 13 live oaks moved out of the footprint of the Blanton Museum in 2003. Larry Maginnis prepping students before a Longhorn ReLeaf planting. A look at one of the six Monterrey oaks planted. The tree maintenance crew at UT, from left: Larry Maginnis, Jake Trinkle, Ken Gall, Bill Norman, and Leo Mendez. Opposite below: a map of campus trees.

All three victories speak to the shift toward tree preservation that has happened on the campus and in the administration. Never before have trees had as many or as sophisticated supporters in campus history. With the development of a Master Tree Plan, Maginnis hopes to capitalize on the current goodwill toward trees and make some permanent standards for tree care, standardize construction procedures, and compile lists of preferred species, building designs, and vendors. He intends to write pruning regulations and establish planting principles to guide future administrations and groundskeepers so that the mistakes that were made in the past — at least the honest ones — are not repeated in the future.

As part of a larger intellectual movement, the recent protecting of trees represents yet another manifestation of the University’s efforts to undo so much of what was done during UT’s boom years four decades ago. President Powers and his administration

seek to limit the size of classes, decrease enrollment, increase spending per student, and restore the architectural visions of Cass Gilbert and Paul Cret, forsaken during the boom and so badly scarred by abominations such as Jester Center and RLM Hall. Unlikely as it may seem, trees have a part to play in making Texas a university of the first class, in bringing top-flight professors and students to the school, and in fulfilling President Powers’ goal of hoisting UT into the top echelon of public schools in the country.

Chapter 4: Preparing a New Guard Having spent the last three years nipping and tucking the University treescape into shape, Maginnis has allowed himself to more fully dedicate himself to scheduling new plantings and educating the mostly tree-ignorant mass of humanity that daily treads the grounds. In 2005 Maginnis started Longhorn ReLeaf, a tree-planting program that both offers student groups a way to leave a lasting impact on the campus and tries to make tree advocates out of them. Recently Maginnis has been conducting more frequent plantings. He supplies the trees, the tools, and the expertise; the students bring the muscle.

The Menace in Plain View: Squirrels

O

ne of the most dangerous yet seemingly innocuous threats to campus trees are squirrels.

Lovable and fuzzy though they may be, the little brown devils gnaw on tree branches, the same one for weeks, until their clewing finally kills the limb.

The dead branches then turn an unsightly brown.

Trees all over the campus show signs of the abuse.

Squirrels chew on the branches because they get a soothing sensation and because the branches taste sweet. Forget about cracking down on the squirrel population, though. Trees have many defenders, but the squirrels have more.

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A Longhorn ReLeaf planting: the month, October; the day, Saturday; the site, the lawn just west of Waggener Hall. As part of Beautiful U Day, a cross-campus litter cleanup held once every semester since the spring of 2005, 55 students have shown up to plant six 7-year-old Monterrey oaks into the rocky soil beneath them. Spaced out around the grassy area, Maginnis has spraypainted six 3’-wide circles marked with Xs, and beside each he has placed an assortment of shovels, spades, buckets, and other digging tools — and a tree, sitting in a black 30-gallon bucket.

Before he starts explaining to the students their task, Maginnis makes his case. Buildings, he says, at best last 50 years before they need renovating. A tree, however, when properly cared for, can live hundreds of years and contribute to the beauty and feel of the campus. It’s a point he makes constantly with contractors when he’s explaining to them why they must heed whatever trees are nearby: “This tree was here before this building was built,” he’ll say. “And it will be here when you come back to renovate this building again, so you will protect it.”

After fielding a few questions from the students — the holes should be about two feet deep — and demonstrating some particularly clever ways of using one’s body weight to drive the shovels into the hard soil, Maginnis offers a brief warning. Although he has consulted irrigation maps in spacing out the trees, there are always surprises underfoot.

When the contractors completed work on Waggener Hall, they buried leftover bricks and red tile shards. Landscapists and arborists refer to the phenomenon as “contractor’s mix.” If they find brick or mortar they are not to worry. A pipe they should call him over

to see. “But if you find Jimmy Hoffa,” he says, “come get me immediately.”

They set to work in groups of seven or eight, some wearing boots and others in flip-flops. No one finds Jimmy Hoffa, but two groups hit utility pipes and one barges through some contractor’s mix. Within 90 minutes, all the groups are finished, and six trees jut out of the ground, each about 12 feet high and surrounded by neat rings of dark brown mulch.

Biology and Asian cultures and languages senior Natasha Raheja, organizer of Beautiful U Day, explains afterward that planting a tree on campus “felt so good,” and that she and previous organizers of Beautiful U Day added tree-planting to the litter clean-up events because it has a more permanent effect on the campus. “Planting a tree allows students to connect with the University in a different way,” she says. “You can establish a longterm relationship with a tree and watch it mature and grow.”

Chemical engineering junior Stacey Louie, of the Campus Environmental Center, which partners with Longhorn ReLeaf to supply the student muscle for plantings, says, “People take for granted trees, but whether they know it or not, they connect with them on some level.” As she and Natasha and the rest of the students trickle back to dorms or libraries, one girl asks Maginnis how quickly the tree she helped plant will grow. “Oh, she’s [the tree] gonna grow fast,” says Maginnis. “Next year at this time, she’ll be twice this size.”

“Cool,” the girl smiles. “I’ll be here then.”

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