Through "Roots to Renewal," Trees Removed from UMW Theater Site Will be Returned to Campus
Initiative has been a passion project for the university's director of landscape and grounds.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Instead of going into the landfill or being ground up as mulch, many of the trees that were taken down for construction of the new University of Mary Washington theater will return to campus as either furniture or funding.
UMW’s director of landscape and grounds, Holly Chichester-Morby, is driving the initiative, which she calls “Roots to Renewal,” and which has been her passion for the past year.
When she learned about the scale of tree removal involved in the theater project, Chichester-Morby started having panic attacks, “and I don’t think I was the only one,” she said.
“The trees [on campus] mean a lot to a lot of people.”
The new theater will be built at the corner of William Street and Sunken Road, on the footprint of two dormitories—Russell and Marshall halls—which are in the process of being demolished.
The area was also home to “a whole forest” of trees, including beech, oak, southern yellow pine, sweetgum, and dogwood, which created a bio-diverse habitat for squirrels, foxes, possums, birds, and insects.
At least one of the trees, a red oak, was more than 100 years old, Chichester-Morby said. She knows, because she counted the rings after it came down.
Many students report that UMW’s tree-lined campus is what attracted them to the school, and the trees—and critters they harbor—often go on to play a role in their core college memories. The campus has also been a designated Arbor Day Foundation Tree Campus since 2015, a recognition that comes with standards to maintain.
Chichester-Morby takes her job as “steward of everything with roots” seriously.
“I knew there had to be a better answer than to chuck them in the landfill or grind them up for mulch,” she said.
One day while looking through Linked In, Chichester-Morby happened upon the Colombia, Maryland-based company Cambium Carbon, which works to salvage wood waste and turn it into a viable resource.
“I thought, ‘That would be the lemonade to this lemon,’” she said.
Chichester-Morby and her team, along with partners from the Virginia Department of Forestry, spent a day cataloguing all 100-some of the trees that were slated to come down, measuring their height and diameter. She sent all the information to Cambium, asking “Is any of this worth anything?'“
The answer was yes. Over winter break, the company sent several logging trucks to Fredericksburg to collect the downed trees, and these will go into the wider wood economy, with the proceeds coming back to UMW’s tree fund for Chichester-Morby to use to purchase new trees.
Another batch of logs were sustainably milled and are now “curing” for 10 months at Cambium’s warehouse. Once ready, this wood will come back to campus in the form of furniture and art for the new theater, and handmade, artisan items, such as bowls and platters.
Chichester-Morby said there will be opportunities for local woodworkers and university students to make something out of the reclaimed wood.
Another batch of trees that were diseased or too small to be reclaimed will be ground into mulch to be spread on campus.
“So whether the trees come back as money, or mulch, or furniture, they’re still coming back here,” Chichester-Morby said.
As landscape director, Chichester-Morby has also been involved in the landscaping plan for the new theater, which will attempt to replace 1:1 all of the trees and species that were removed.
There are two trees still standing on site that she’s still hoping the construction will be able to work around—a Chinese fir and a persimmon.
“They’re not native, but they’re unique they’re the only ones on campus,” she said.
If they do have to come down, however, there’s a plan in place to give them a second life.
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