Almost 95 years ago Colonel Robert H. Montgomery planted some unique evergreen specimens on his country estate known in Cos Cob, CT as Wildacres. Today we call this beautiful property the Montgomery Pinetum and some of Colonel Montgomery’s unique treasures still thrive here.
Join arboretum curator Lisa Beebe as we take a walk back in time and look at some of the specimens that were planted nearly a century ago and others that were planted more recently but have a connection with our history.
Please dress appropriately for the weather and wear suitable footwear. Space is limited and registration is required.
Almost 95 years ago Colonel Robert H. Montgomery planted some unique evergreen specimens on his country estate known in Cos Cob, CT as Wildacres. Today we call this beautiful property the Montgomery Pinetum and some of Colonel Montgomery’s unique treasures still thrive here.
Join arboretum curator Lisa Beebe as we take a walk back in time and look at some of the specimens that were planted nearly a century ago and others that were planted more recently but have a connection with our history.
Please dress appropriately for the weather and wear suitable footwear. Space is limited and registration is required.
The Greenwich Tree Conservancy is pleased to announce the election of Elizabeth Hopley as President of its Board of Directors.
Ms Hopley’s involvement with the Greenwich Tree Conservancy began in 2018, when she co-chaired the organization’s annual Tree Party.
She joined the Board in 2022 and has since played an active role in initiatives focused on undergrounding utility wires, tree preservation, and town beautification.
A longtime Greenwich resident and RTM member, Hopley is also deeply engaged in numerous regional and national organizations, bringing broad experience and thoughtful leadership to her new role.
The Tree Conservancy also welcomes three newly elected members to its Board of Directors: Matt Popp, John R. Conte III and Betsy Vitton.
Each brings a distinct and valuable skill set to support the organization’s mission.
Read the full story in the Greenwich Free Press here.
The GTC recently explored a deceptively simple question: what is a tree? While scientists often define a tree as a tall, woody plant with a single trunk, the reality is more complicated. Many plants can grow as shrubs or trees depending on conditions, and some familiar “trees,” like palms, bamboo, and bananas, don’t meet the classic biological definition at all.
The confusion extends to taxonomy. Trees aren’t a single biological group; tree-like forms have evolved many times across different plant families. In fact, a peach tree is more closely related to a rose than to an oak.
For the GTC, however, the answer is more practical. Connecticut’s climate naturally limits what can grow here, leaving us with traditionally woody species that thrive locally. Our focus remains simple: planting and protecting the trees best suited to our environment to help create a Greenwich that is greener, healthier, and more beautiful.
Read the full article in the Greenwich Sentinel to learn more about this complicated question.
The GTC is proud to partner with the Town of Greenwich on the first phase of an ambitious habitat restoration and tree-planting project at Laddin’s Rock Sanctuary in Old Greenwich.
Prior to restoration efforts, large sections of the 18-acre sanctuary—featuring natural forest, walking trails and waterways—had become severely degraded by invasive Japanese knotweed. Greenwich Parks & Trees staff successfully removed the knotweed and will continue to monitor and maintain the area in the coming months.
Following the invasive removal, we planted an initial 70 trees throughout the sanctuary, with additional plantings planned for the spring. The trees include a diverse mix of cold-hardy native species commonly found in Connecticut forests, such as American hornbeam, tulip tree and five species of oak.
Read the full article in the Greenwich Sentinel to learn more about future phases of the project.
At our recent board meeting, GTC honored Leslie Lee for her exceptional leadership and service as Interim President following the untimely passing of John Conte, Jr. last year. During this period of loss and transition, Leslie stepped in with generosity and skill to lead the board with grace and strength.
Elizabeth Hopley is the board’s newly-elected president.
By Elizabeth Hopley / Column in the Greenwich Sentinel
The day before Thanksgiving, during families’ last minute errands, a construction supply truck snagged the sagging wires along busy East Putnam Avenue, grinding traffic to a halt. Firemen arrived quickly to untangle the mess and divert traffic, but had to leave the wires strewn in the street until the utility company could restring them back to their precarious perch. It’s unknown how many stores and residents lost power, internet, phone, but it begs the question: Isn’t there a better way for utilities to service customers in the 21st century?
This same story plays out countless times across our town and nation: a fragile 19th century system of exposed overhead wires easily derailed by minor mishaps or weather conditions, causing blackouts, lost productivity, and safety issues. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that America’s overhead grid costs us $80–$180 billion every year in outages, spoiled food, lost wages, and emergency services.
Now, imagine our town without the unsightly web of overhead wires. Instead of driving past a procession of utility poles leaning under the weight of too many wires, there’s a lush, green canopy of trees, cleaning the air, absorbing storm water runoff and cooling the road in the heat of summer. Meanwhile the underground grid is buried safely along our roads, bringing worry-free reliability to our utilities infrastructure.
. . .
Undergrounding overhead wires and planting trees will deliver four immediate wins: First, blackouts almost disappear and communications like phone and cable become stable and reliable. Second, scenic beauty is restored as trees replace the visual clutter of wires and poles. Third, home values increase by 7–20% in neighborhoods that have underground utilities. And lastly, the cost can be offset by savings in other areas. Outages already cost billions. New drilling technology has slashed undergrounding costs and the outsized costs of maintaining overhead systems are minimized
In early November, the Greenwich Tree Conservancy planted eight new trees at the Cos Cob Railroad Station parking lot, a commuter hub on the New Haven Line of the Metro-North Railroad. Serving residents traveling to New York City and other destinations along the line, the station is one of Greenwich’s primary public transportation centers.
Its parking lots were found to contain substantial unused space suitable for additional trees, including areas where trees once stood but were never replaced after removal.
The Greenwich Tree Conservancy selected the Cos Cob Station parking lot as the latest site in its Parking Parks initiative, which has brought shade and beauty to municipal lots across Greenwich. Unshaded parking lots are major contributors to the urban heat island effect. Air temperatures in full-sun lots can be 4–8°F higher, while the surface temperature of unshaded asphalt can soar nearly 40°F hotter than shaded surfaces. Inside unshaded parked cars, temperatures can spike by as much as 50°F when compared to cars parked under trees.
The eight newly planted trees will help reduce these extreme temperature swings and also improve stormwater management, which is an important benefit for an area that experiences frequent flooding during severe storms. Trees are also important for softening the appearance of parking lots, which can otherwise prove unsightly in suburban neighborhoods.
This planting emphasized native species and trees well-suited to the demanding conditions typical of parking lots. The selected varieties include Kentucky coffee tree, scarlet oak, swamp white oak, and Shumard oak.
Greenwich residents’ love for their trees was on full display at an October 23 Greenwich Tree Conservancy Treasured Trees reception at Sam Bridge Nursery and Greenhouses.
Sadock Family describing their treasured tree
The reception was the culmination of the Greenwich Tree Conservancy’s program inviting residents to nominate a “treasured tree” on their property, whether it be because of the tree’s special history, unique species, or shape. This year for the first time GTC also recognized statewide Notable Tree Champions and Co-Champions.
To recognize and celebrate the Treasured Trees on private property, the GTC installed a nameplate on the trees identifying the scientific and common name of the tree. At the reception, each family received a framed photograph of their tree and nameplate.
Honoree Ron Hoerner for the Lindemann Family with GTC Arboretum Curator Lisa Beebe
Families shared loving memories of why their trees are so meaningful, including a tree under which generations of a single family played and relaxed, a tree planted to commemorate a college graduation and newfound personal growth and lifelong passion for learning, a tree admired for its wonderful structure, canopy, and profusion of flowers in the spring, and a tree as a living piece of family history, rooted in the soil of a property that has been in their family since the early 1930s.
GTC congratulates the 2025 Treasured Tree Honorees: Fred Landman, Flo and Kim Leibrock, Nancy and Robert Sadock, Carmen Konigsbach and Colin Pearson for Stone Harbor Land Company, Colin Pearson for the Stanton House Inn, and Kevin Gallagher.
GTC Leadership team Pres. Leslie Lee, Advisory Board Co-Chairs Cheryl Dunson and Sue Baker and executive director Kate Dzikiewicz
While the Treasured Trees Program is a “Greenwich-grown” GTC event, there is a statewide program that GTC has resurrected in Greenwich – the Notable Tree program. Among the hundreds of millions of trees in Connecticut, there are exceptional trees which are notable because of their great size, unusual species or for their historic or social significance. In the 1980s, the Connecticut College Arboretum established the statewide Notable Tree program, surveying all 169 towns across Connecticut. Since 2023, the Greenwich Tree Conservancy has submitted updates to the statewide Notable Tree Program. GTC recognized 29 statewide Champion Trees and 10 statewide Co-Champions and their owners with special certificates at the event.
Treasured Tree Judges Dr. Greg Kramer and Sam Bridge with Honorees Flo and Kim Leibrock
The Greenwich Tree Conservancy congratulates the 2025 Notable Tree Champion and Co-Champion Honorees: Fred Landman, Dr. Ron Wilson, Ron Hoerner for the Lindemann Family, Thomas Riles, Jack Carr for Putnam Place Apartments, Lynn Garelick and Rusty Parker for Christ Church Greenwich, and Aaron Sinay for Greenwich Country Day School.
The Greenwich Tree Conservancy seeks to raise awareness and create respect for special trees and recognize the owners who steward them.
I subscribe to a site called Wordsmith.org and each day I receive a new word. I thoroughly enjoy receiving a word each day and learning of its etymology and usage. A recent word was one that I knew too well: arboricide. According to the site, the earliest documented use was in 1899 and it is derived from Latin: arbor- for tree and -cide for killing, ie, killing a tree.
Sometimes the killing of a tree is intentional and other times it is not. In all cases, you cannot “unchop” a tree. Even dead trees – as long as they don’t pose a hazard to property and people – can be beneficial, for example, as a nesting or food source for wildlife as well as source of artistic appreciation. Has anyone seen the beautiful carved eagle at St. Mary’s/Putnam cemetery created from a dead tree trunk?
So what are some things homeowners can keep in mind about their trees?
The location of trees to each other is very important because trees protect each other. Extensive clearing of trees weakens and can kill more than just the trees that are removed. Trees also can be weakened by landscape work which is not done properly. For example. trees can suffer when weed-whacking devices damage the trunks of trees or when mulch is improperly applied creating mulch “volcanoes.”
Diversity helps to protect your trees. Plant a variety of trees rather than planting many of the same kind. According to the CT Protective Tree Association the increasing list of invasive insects “is a list of many of the most serious biological threats to our trees and forests.” Invasive insects such the emerald ash borer and spotted lantern fly have ravaged not just Greenwich but communities across the country. Just like financial portfolios our tree plantings need to be diverse.
Plan for any construction impacts by talking to your architect, landscape designer and/or contractor to identify which trees you want to save and create a plan to protect them. A layperson’s rule of thumb is that the “critical root zone” extends at least as far as the canopy drip line – the breadth of the canopy you see generally reflects the breadth of the roots below. An effective plan should include strategies to avoid impacts such as compaction (eg, avoid stacking equipment and heavy materials underneath trees), damage from machinery (avoid repeatedly driving over the roots of trees), cutting roots when installing utility pipes. One highly visible protection method is to install sturdy protective fences as far out from the trunks of trees as possible to protect the root systems.
The benefits of healthy trees are myriad. Most have heard of the environmental benefits of trees such as the filtering of air, water, and noise pollution and supporting diverse wildlife. Trees also provide financial benefits such as reducing flooding impacts by absorbing rain through their leaf systems and roots, providing shade which can significantly reduce utility bills, and increasing property values by as much as 20%. Add to this, the growing body of research on the benefits of trees and green spaces in our everyday lives to our physical and mental well-being such as reducing stress, boosting the immune system, accelerating recovery from injury or illness, lowering the risk of heart disease and diabetes, reducing aggression, and improving longevity. And as GTC Executive Director Kate Dzikiewicz spotlighted in her recent Sentinel article, research is also showing that trees that are part of the school campus can enhance children’s ability to manage stress, concentrate, and stay motivated. In a 2021 WBUR Radio Boston interview, Dr. Howard Frumkin, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington School of Public Health observed “Proximity to trees is associated with a ridiculously broad range of health benefits. I wish we had pills that were this good for health.” (https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/the-health-benefits-of-trees/)
Image provided by GTC. Roots are one of the most vital parts of a tree. They are responsible for nutrient and water uptake, storing energy, and anchoring the tree. 90-95% of a tree’s root system is in the top three feet of soil, and more than half is in the top one foot. It is critical that tree roots that lie in the path of construction are protected.
Richard Louv, who wrote Last Child in the Woods, noted “Biologically, we are all still hunters and gatherers, and there is something in us we do not fully understand that needs immersion in nature.” We are fortunate to live in a town with an extensive leafy canopy on public and private lands. As homeowners, we should not take our trees for granted and periodically should give them some attention. We can speak to landscape or tree professionals about care for our newly installed trees as well as those that are well established. Trees like people are susceptible to age, disease, maltreatment, and extreme weather, and a little TLC can go a long way to preserving a tree and the benefits it provides. Remember you can’t unchop a tree.
Cheryl Dunson Advisory Board Co-Chair, Greenwich Tree Conservancy
The Greenwich Tree Conservancy selected the Cos Cob Station parking lot as the latest site in its Parking Parks initiative, which has brought shade and beauty to municipal lots across Greenwich. Unshaded parking lots are major contributors to the urban heat island effect. Air temperatures in full-sun lots can be 4–8°F higher, while the surface temperature of unshaded asphalt can soar nearly 40°F hotter than shaded surfaces. Inside unshaded parked cars, temperatures can spike by as much as 50°F when compared to cars parked under trees.
