According to the Charles River Watershed Association, Needham lost 5.5% of its tree cover between 2014 and 2021. That loss of canopy is largely attributable to clear cutting on private land as new homes have been built. In response to residents’ concerns about protecting older trees, the Select Board formed a Tree Preservation Committee, which may recommend ways to limit tree cutting on private land, but has not yet. In the meantime, though, there is some land in Needham where tree preservation and planting is very much underway and future generations may bask in the shade of mighty trees: our public lands.
In recent years, Needham has replanted a large number of public spaces that are in everyday use, including the Town Common, Walker-Gordon Field, parts of Memorial Field, Claxton Field and the Sunita Williams Elementary School.
“When we do these landscapes, we are thinking about what these trees will look like in a hundred years,” said Ed Olsen, Needham’s Parks and Forestry superintendent and tree warden. “We don’t try to shoehorn trees in.”
Many of the plantings include new disease-resistant cultivars of the American Elm, the tree that the Patriots met under when planning the revolt against British rule. Occupying British troops cut down the Liberty Tree on the Boston Common. Then a century and a half later, Dutch Elm Disease wiped out most elms in the United States. As part of their resurgence, Olsen worked with the Exchange Club to plant a Liberty Elm at Fire Station 2 on Highland Avenue in 2022.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, elms have a 300-year lifespan, grow to a height of 125 feet and have a crown that is almost as wide as the tree is tall. Olsen said that the newly introduced elms are expected to have the same growth characteristics as the variety of trees that once graced the American landscape.
Olsen heads a department of 17, of whom four are focussed on forestry. For Olsen, this is his third career. He was an elementary school teacher and then worked as a golf course superintendent.
He has enjoyed the transition from taking care of private sporting grounds to working to promote and preserve public lands. “I used to love taking care of a property for 300 members and making it Disney-like so they forget all their woes. Now I can do that for 30,000 people,” he said.
Most of the focus of the forestry personnel is on neither public nor private trees, but on a third category of tree known as public shade trees. Often planted on private land but within 20 feet of a public right of way, Massachusetts law grants each town or city’s tree warden the authority to protect them.
“My job is to protect people from trees and to protect trees from the public,” he said.
Olsen spends a lot of time educating the public about trees and advising homeowners about tree disputes with neighbors. His most common advice is telling people to get to know their neighbors and to start with a conversation. He plants trees with second-graders on Arbor Day and works with the Environmental Club at the High School.
Needham offers free trees, including elms, for front yards. Olsen said those trees add to the aesthetics and sustainability for the whole town. “If it was up to me there would be a tree in every front yard,” he said. The legacy of Olsen’s department and their work in public spaces will live long into the future. Olsen points out that we are currently benefiting from DPW plantings from 100 years ago. Unlike many past plantings, Olsen focuses on variety so that future diseases are unable to wipe out the landscape.
Olsen said the Bradford Pears on Great Plain near downtown are threatened by frequent drought conditions. He said that the town’s ash trees are dying from disease and being taken down. “In the past few years we’ve put up Parrotia trees, amur maackia trees, poplar trees, among many other species. Many trees that people haven’t even heard of.”
To Olsen, a healthy tree canopy helps many complex issues.
“Not only do we have a carbon sequestration problem, we have a storm water problem. And we are going to have a water resource problem in the future,“ Olsen said.
In fact, Needham has slipped back into drought conditions this fall.
Olsen said that the plant scape that surrounds the Sunita Williams school is a model that is attracting statewide interest. “The 10-acre site at Sunita has tough species: junipers, ornamental grasses and hardscape,” Olsen said.
The plantings segue seamlessly with playfields, forest and wetland. “The thing I am most proud of is that there is no irrigation,” Olsen said. “Everything is picked for sustainability.”
Perhaps when the Little League season starts in Needham decades or even centuries from now, parents will sit under the shade of majestic elms at Walker-Gordon Field and at the Town Common elms planted in the park’s corners will cast shade on picnickers. Throughout the year, a variety of flowering trees and plants will adorn the Town Common and many other public spaces.
In addition to the elms, Hinoki cypress, sweet gums and the Blue Tree, a sugar maple, will hopefully tower over the Common. Olsen and his crew have done everything to assure this bright future for Needham’s public spaces, but trees, like individuals in any species, have uncertain futures. Some perish early in their lifespan. Climate change adds another degree of uncertainty, but unlike the diminishing stock of private trees, they are expanding and diversifying.
Save as PDF