West Hartford Garden Club Donates 100 Elm Trees to Town

The West Hartford Garden Club is putting the “elm” back into Elmwood.

The club, thanks to a grant from the Vernon D. and Florence E. Roosa Family Foundation Memorial Fund at the Hartford Foundation of Public Giving, is donating more than 100 disease-resistant Liberty elm trees to the town of West Hartford.

The club purchased the trees from the Elm Research Institute, a non-profit organization in New Hampshire that is dedicated to saving the elm from extinction through the research and development of disease-resistant elm trees, according to a press release.

A shovel ceremony was held at the Elmwood Community Center on Monday to commemorate the donation.

The focus will be planting the trees in Elmwood, though others will be planted throughout the town, according to Helen Rubino-Turco, West Hartford’s director of human and leisure services.

Rubino-Turco said that her generation doesn’t know the beauty of American elms or the impact elms have in society and the ecosystem.

“We’re so grateful to the West Hartford Garden Club for all the work it does, particularly on this momentous day of donating 100 disease-resistant elms to beautify the town,” Rubino-Turco said.

The elms will be planted in parks as well as on streets and near town facilities, Rubino-Turco said. In addition, private residents whose trees were knocked down in storms in recent years will have an opportunity to have an elm planted on their property.

“It’s Elmwood, and through the course of disease and a couple of falls where we had terrific storms, [we lost a number of elms],” Garden Club President Margaret Pulito said. “We’d like to see them restored.”

In addition, some of the elms will be traded to the Knox Foundation in Hartford for dogwood trees, Pulito said.

The elms are currently being stored at Westmoor Park, as it’s too late in the season to start the full-scale planting project.

Nevertheless, Jeanne Grandy, the Garden Club’s civic projects committee co-chair, was no less excited.

“Wow!” she said. “They look small now, but they’re going to grow. I think the residents will be delighted.”

Town officials certainly are.

“A magnificent American elm flourishes on the corner of Farmington Avenue just west of the Center,” said Town Manager Ronald Van Winkle in a press release. “I don’t know how it escaped the blight. It will be delightful to watch younger elm trees mature into similar masterpieces.”