Inspired by the drawings, photographs, and etchings of Frank A. Waugh (1869-1943), an overlooked pioneer who promoted ideas about native planting design and the emerging field of modern ecology.
Working with 5th graders at our local elementary school we began observing winter trees.
We also talked about where paper comes from. Local newspaper editors and a chief of printing tell us their newsprint is made from both recycled fibers and softwoods like spruce, fir, balsam fir or pine. Our local newsprint comes from Kruger and Resolute Forest Products, milled primarily in Canada. The students created over twenty winter tree collages which will be exhibited at our local art gallery in Leverett in February. The images vary from the use of text only to some using photographs, especially of people.
Links to learn more about paper-making: https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2016/eccc/En153-6-32-1996-eng.pdf https://www.resolutefp.com/Products/Paper/Newsprint/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_engineering
Some of newspaper tree collages using newspaper text.Some of the collages using photo images especially of people.
The postcard from 1910 features the Black Walnut Class Tree of 1894 (far left) and the Japanese Elm Class Tree of 1899 (middle-right) still on campus as of 2023.
The history of the Frank A. Waugh Arboretum-
” The Frank A. Waugh Arboretum at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst is built on the historic territory of the Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Nonotuck Nations. Following European colonization and the often violent destruction of Native American agroforestry stands, the land currently occupied by UMass was mostly cleared and then replanted. Over the course of more than a century, the landscape that is the Frank A. Waugh Arboretum would transform dramatically.
There are many individuals throughout post-colonial campus history who have contributed to the arboretum in various ways. One of the most notable of these individuals was William S. Clark. Clark, the third president of Massachusetts Agricultural College, established a relationship with Hokkaido, Japan that would have a centuries-long impact on our campus landscape. At the end of the 19th century, Clark and his student William Penn Brooks introduced a number of accessions from Japan and east Asia, several of which still remain on campus today. At the onset of the 20th century, our university landscape prospered from the efforts of Frank A. Waugh, who was department head of Landscape and Gardening from 1902-1939. In 1944, President Hugh Potter Baker officially designated the campus as the Frank A. Waugh Arboretum in tribute to the many contributions Waugh made to our campus arboretum.”
A different kind of post this week invites you to learn something about the little known botanic artist Marianne North and her remarkable life painting portraits of trees and other plants. Frank Waugh traveled to London’s Kew Gardens a few times in his life after the Marianne North Gallery had opened. It is possible that he visited it, but there is no record of what his visits entailed. Learning about her life, travels, and paintings would have been of interest to Waugh and his family.
Marianne North The Calaveras Grove of The Big Tree or Wellingtonia, in The Evening 1875 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Gardens
When Marianne North’s asked Kew Garden Director Sir Joseph Hooker to include coffee and tea in the gallery she would build to house her botanic paintings, he refused. So instead she then designed two door panels in her gallery to host her paintings of coffee and tea plants to welcome visitors. Her gallery opened in 1882 with over 800 of her paintings and remains open today.
Marianne North traveled the world over to paint botanic species in remote areas. One example, painting 624, preserved among her more than 800 in the Marianne North Gallery in Kew Gardens, is entitled Curious Plants from the Forest of Matang, Sarawak, Borneo. The first herbarium specimen of this plant was not collected until 1973, nearly 100 years later.The species is now named Chassalia northiana T.Y. Yu in Marianne’s honor, the fifth plant species to bear her name.
Painting 624 Chassalia northiana by Marianne North at the Marianne North Gallery, Kew Gardens
I am finishing The Man Who Loved Trees, my book about Frank A. Waugh. Drawings and etchings never before shared with the public will be the focus. My post here features Waugh’s pen drawing of a Burnham beech. Burhnam Beeches is part of a National Nature Reserve and Site of Special Scientific Interest in London. It is one of the best examples of an ancient woodland in Great Britain. Pollarded trees date to over 400 years. This reserve drew Waugh when he was able to visit London. He created photographs, drawings and etchings of the beeches, oaks and birches from there. In addition to the pen drawing, two links about Burnham Beeches follow.
