A Celebration of Trees

With more than 1,500 trees on campus—and 119 different species—it’s tough to name favorites. But this map shows a few you might want to check out the next time you’re here.

Brown Family Courtyard. This area enclosed by Harned and Thompson halls is home to the Hazleton Northwest Native Species Garden; among the native trees there are Pacific dogwood, Alaska cedar, cascara, and more.

Dawn redwood. This tree was once thought to be extinct. It’s considered a “deciduous conifer”—a conifer that loses its needles each year. There are two in Karlen Quad.

European beech. The two outside Jones Hall are thought to be among the oldest trees on campus. The one on the north side, between Jones and McIntyre, is the larger—and more frequently climbed—of the two.

Franklin tree. This tree is native to Georgia; it’s been extinct in the wild since the early 19th century. Its beautiful white flowers emerge in September.

Giant sequoia. The one in front of Wheelock is iconic, of course, but groundskeepers have planted 12 more around campus over the years.

Mimosa. You may have noticed a pair of these in Jones Circle, near the steps to Jones Hall. Their pink blossoms are gorgeous, but when they hit the sidewalk, they leave a sticky residue that can require a power-washing.

Monkey puzzle tree. This unusual-looking tree is native to South America. Legend has it that the one in the President's Woods started as a plant in a faculty office; the faculty member planted it when they left the university.

Ponderosa pine. The quintessential western pine tree, known for its long, graceful needles and the vanilla-like scent of its bark.

President’s Woods. This grove is ever-changing, with new trees planted nearly every year. It’s also home to a joke of sorts: After a 2006 windstorm felled a number of campus trees, a groundskeeper carved one of the stumps into the shape of a mushroom. Sixteen years later, it’s still there.

West Woods. This area is dominated by Douglas fir, which is the most numerous tree on campus—with nearly 300 individual trees—and in the Pacific Northwest. Students love the firs for setting up hammocks and slack lines.

Yoshino cherry. These five were planted in a 2017 cere- mony honoring Puget Sound students of Japanese American ancestry who were sent to incarceration camps during World War II

Caring for Our Natural Legacy

For the groundskeepers, ensuring the health of campus trees is all in a day’s work.

On any given day, you can find Andy Lambert tending to the needs of one of Puget Sound’s 1,511 trees. He’s one of the groundskeepers responsible for keeping our trees healthy and growing—and he takes that job personally.

“Each tree is an individual,” Lambert says, “so there’s a relationship you form with it as you’re pruning.”
Caring for the campus’s trees is a task that Lambert has enjoyed for 16 years. Lambert pays particular attention to the youngest trees on campus; guiding their growth and development while they’re establishing themselves ensures that each tree remains strong and healthy as it matures.

The grounds crew’s ongoing stewardship of campus trees, coupled with the university’s commitment to environmental justice and sustainability, has consistently earned Puget Sound a Tree Campus Higher Education program distinction from the Arbor Day Foundation. For Grounds Manager Phil Hancock, the recognition affirms the importance of caring for the trees on campus.

“Sustainability is top of mind with everything we’re doing,” says Hancock. “We want to be good stewards of the environment, so it’s a point of pride for us to be a certified tree campus.”

To maintain that status as a tree campus, Hancock and his team offer service-learning opportunities to educate about sustainable tree maintenance, observe Arbor Day with an annual tree-planting ceremony, update Puget Sound’s online canopy map, and work with an advisory board of invested campus and community members to implement a detailed tree-care plan.

When possible, Hancock and the grounds crew members do what they can to save trees through transplanting, supporting limbs to stave off storm damage, stopping the spread of disease and infestation, and thinning older trees (rather than cutting them down) to allow saplings to get direct sunlight. In many cases, damaged trees are able to make a full recovery and go on to thrive for many decades with the proper care.

“Tree limbs are a lot like bones—the more they’re used, the stronger they become,” Lambert says. “We want to encourage that strong growth, so you may see a tree with a strap on one limb. The strap allows it to move during a high-load situation, like a wind or rain storm, but gives it a stopping point so it doesn’t break.”

Saving trees that might otherwise be removed is about more than aesthetics. For Hancock, it’s about preserving our university’s history. That’s why the tree-care plan includes a long-term vision for replacing trees that die with new plantings that will fill the same ecological niche as their predecessors.

The careful attention paid to each tree by the grounds crew is evident all over campus, where trees representing 119 species contribute to the overall character of Puget Sound. Lambert is grateful to be part of a long line of caretakers who have ensured that today’s trees can be enjoyed by future generations of Loggers.

“Some of these trees have the potential to be here 500 years from now,” Lambert says. “They add so much to the beauty of the campus and provide great wildlife habitat. All we have to do is protect them and give them what they need to keep growing.” —Jonny Eberle

Preserving History

Five cherry trees outside Howarth Hall continue a remembrance that began more than 80 years ago.

During the 1939–40 academic year, 16 students of Japanese descent formed the Japanese Students’ Club and, as a gift to the school, planted 16 Japanese cherry trees in a “friendship circle” next to Anderson Hall.

Just two years later, on the heels of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government ordered that the 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast be removed and incarcerated in internment camps. That number included 36 students at Puget Sound.

Shigeo Wakamatsu ’42, Hon.’09, one of the 36, read a poignant message during chapel on May 15, 1942, on behalf of those who were about to be sent away:

“We have at last come to the place where we must part,” he said. “It has been wonderful knowing you all personally. ... We hope that each spring you will watch the cherry trees bloom and grow. It is our hope that those cherry trees will remind you of us. It is our only tangible contribution to the college, and we leave it behind as a token of our appreciation and thanks for all that you have done for us.”

Cherry trees have a short lifespan—typically no more than 20 years. But students and groundskeepers have made sure to plant new cherry trees over the years. Scott Higashi ’91 and Jill Nishi ’89 (both of whom would later become university trustees) planted several as students in the late 1980s. And, for a time in the 2000s, members of the Asian Pacific American Student Union would decorate the trees with paper cranes and place signs at the trees’ base to honor the students who had been incarcerated. Most recently, in 2017, members of the campus community (including Higashi) took part in a planting ceremony for five new Yoshino cherry saplings along the eastern side of Howarth Hall. 

As for the 36 Japanese American students who were forced to leave campus in 1942, the university honored them during Commencement in 2009. They were awarded the degree Bachelor of Arts, honoris causa, nunc pro tunc—"now for then." A plaque in front of the cherry trees bears the names of all 36 students.