Elmhurst College campus is now a flourishing arboretum

Fernleaf weeping beech trees and European weeping beech are both beautiful, but the differences between the two are pretty obvious when you see them standing side by side on the Elmhurst College campus.

Both have the pendulous habit that creates cozy hiding places. But the fernleaf gets its name from the deeply serrated and even threadlike leaves, while the European one shows the oval, veined leaf usually associated with beeches.

In fact, in the area there are beech trees with five different shapes of leaves, said Paul Hack, grounds superintendent for the college.

These are two of the special trees that people come to see at the 38-acre college in Elmhurst, said Hack. But it's hard to pick favorites when the campus has 650 species of trees and shrubs. The number of woody plants and the fact that they are labeled make the grounds an arboretum, said Hack.

A Dawn redwood with branches spreading every which way also attracts many visitors, said Hack. "We try to leave trees as natural as we can and not cut low branches if there's no problem with sidewalks," said Hack.

One of his favorites is a Chinese pistachio because it was the first he'd ever seen of this species.

And he also points out a castor aralia with huge, tropical-looking leaves and a thorny trunk.

Nearby a Summer Glow tamarisk's pink bee-pleasing flowers that resemble ostrich plumes bloom among its silvery blue feathery leaves. While it is considered a weed in the Southwest, Hack does not find the tamarisk, which blooms in July and August, invasive. He recommends planting it with enough room to spread out.

And Hack continues to plant trees, selecting American and Turkish filberts, three varieties of Japanese maples and a group of miniature evergreens including Vercurve white pine.

On the other hand, Dave Froede, an arborist with Bartlett Tree Experts, recently hired to help care for the arboretum, doesn't really pick favorite trees. Rather, he notices ones that cause him to worry.

He points at an English oak that probably won't survive the construction that occurred nearby before Bartlett was hired, for example. And Froede can't figure out what's wrong with a Chinese Scholar tree that did not leaf out this year and has considerable dead wood.

The college and the company work to care for trees in a green - or environmentally friendly - fashion. This requires inspections during the growing season, said Froede, and hopefully a natural treatment when disease or insects are found.

The surviving American elms require fungicide prevention and the campus lost one this spring, said Hack. Bagworms are another pest that has defoliated honey locust and spruce trees. Nearby trees were treated with a naturally occurring organic chemical to save the foliage.

Mites are hard to control, but predatory mites will keep their cousins under control. This is the integrated pest management tool that Froede has had the best success with. However, the mites seem to work best in tight, urban plants, like burning bush. They did not solve the problem as well on spruce.

One problem this month saw trees that added lots of leaves during the wet, cool spring and early summer drop some of those leaves or see them turn yellow as compensation when the weather got hotter and drier.

The heat wave was particularly hard on lindens, birch and tulip trees, but only new plantings saw conditions get dangerous before the weather changed.

One solution was to put irrigation bags on small saplings. The campus only has a few small areas of irrigation, including at the new West Hall, a dormitory where an underground retention tank collecting rainwater is an example of green features. The area is also planted with native flowers and grasses.

And the trees of Elmhurst College offer a very valuable lesson. While we think of trees as requiring a long time to grow and flourish, perhaps something we plant for our children and grandchildren, these trees have transformed the campus over the last 43 years.

The 1960s were the time when Dutch elm disease devastated neighborhoods across the Midwest, and the college campus was no exception. A landscape architect named Herb Licht noticed the barrenness when he dropped his daughter off to swim at the college pool.

But Licht had a solution, and soon the college hired Ragnar Moen as its first groundskeeper. Starting with a small Shumard oak carried in Moen's station wagon, the two traveled the Midwest purchasing trees that they planted at the college.

Licht lived to be 96 before his death in 2007. Moen retired a few years ago but still visits when Hack has questions, and the oak planted by the Frick Center or student union has grown 40 feet tall.

<p class="factboxtextbold12col"><b>Want to see the trees?</b></p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Visitors are encouraged on the campus of Elmhurst College, where an aboretum boasts 650 species of trees and shrubs.</p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Start here: public.elmhurst.edu/collections/arboretum.</p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Maps: With photos and descriptions, show where many of the trees are.</p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Where: On Prospect Avenue, just south of North Avenue (Route 64) in Elmhurst.</p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Parking: Lot on north side of Alexander Boulevard west of Prospect Avenue.</p> <p class="factboxtextbold12col">Call: (630) 617-3500.</p>