Trees are everywhere in Granby, but sometimes we need one more in a special place. This just happened at Wells Road School where teacher Kristen Lecco’s third grade class became fascinated by trees and decided the interior courtyard viewed from their classroom window, needed one.
The courtyard contained an old birch, but it had been failing for years and needed to be removed. What kind of tree should be planted? Where would the class get one? The answers were just down the road at O’Brien Nurserymen. Owner John O’Brien offered to assess the courtyard’s quality as a site for a new tree. He deemed it appropriate and offered to donate and plant a new one.
A few days later, three class members, Jackson Longo, Wyatt Jabaily and James VonKaenel, visited O’Brien’s nursery and were shown several trees. The boys chose a native flowering dogwood with pink-tinged flowers—a disease-resistant cultivar named Appalachian Blush. It will grow to 20-25 feet.
Flowering dogwoods are the best-selling flowering trees in the United States, having flower, fruit, fall color and winter silhouette. When the tree ages, the bark displays the characteristic alligator hide pattern. The red fruit, called drupes, ripens in early fall, providing nutrition for birds. Leaves in the fall are reddish-purple.
At 9 a.m. on June 6, O’Brien delivered the dogwood and showed the class and staff how to properly plant it. Several of the adults commented that they learned a lot as O’Brien ran through the mistakes that often happen when trees are planted too deep or not watered enough in hot weather.
The courtyard has room for more trees and the third graders are already talking about what might come next. They have even remarked that they will come back to see how this tree is doing when they are much older. They have learned the wisdom of the arborist saying: The best time to plant a tree is 100 years ago; the second-best time is today.
Kudos to student mother Meg Jabaily who was instrumental in getting the tree project started. She says, “I’m not done!”
