- —- ook grag Se cee eerie liiiNtit sia Mestad ara 
The Resilient Trees of F 
Mark Quinn 
n March 4, 1991, I awoke to a knocking 
on my door. A coworker from the Mon- 
roe County Parks Department in Roch- 
ester, New York, planned to pick me up early to 
go to a trade show in Syracuse. When I glanced 
at the clock, however, I realized the power was 
out. The clockface was blank. I dressed quickly 
in the dark, and when I stepped out the front 
door, I found that the day’s agenda was com- 
pletely different than planned. 
My coworker had indeed arrived to pick me 
up, but looking down the street, I saw that ice 
covered everything. My twenty-five-foot-tall 
white birch (Betula papyrifera) was bent over, 
with the tip touching the ground. (This tree 
later sprang back, showing the amazing resil- 
ience of trees to crises.) We headed for Highland 
Park, the historic arboretum on the south side 
of Rochester, where we both worked as horti- 
culturists. After multiple turnarounds due to 
trees blocking the road, we finally arrived at 
the Highland Park production greenhouses. The 
scene that met us was shocking. 
A huge limb from a one-hundred-year-old 
European beech (Fagus sylvatica) had fallen on 
our turn-of-the-century glass greenhouse. Like 
most of the largest trees in the park, this beech 
dated to the early 1890s and was planted by 
horticulturist John Dunbar according to plans 
drafted by Frederick Law Olmsted. We immedi- 
ately set to work removing the limb and closing 
the hole in the damaged greenhouse, stapling 
poly film to the cypress bars in an attempt to 
save the delicate orchids inside. As we worked 
to keep the plants from freezing, we could hear 
the occasional snap of limbs breaking elsewhere 
in the park, but we still had not fully compre- 
hended the scale of devastation around us. 
Rochester has a special affinity for trees. In 
the early 1800s, it was dubbed the Flour City, 
lower City 
as waterpower of the Genesee River was used 
to grind enormous amounts of flour that was 
then shipped via the Erie Canal. By the second 
half of the century, however, Rochester became 
the Flower City, home to many of the country’s 
largest and most prosperous nurseries. Two 
nurserymen played an especially pivotal role: 
George Ellwanger and Patrick Barry, owners 
of the successful Mount Hope Nursery, which 
they established around 1840. 
In 1888, Ellwanger and Barry donated land 
from their nursery grounds to the city to be 
used as a public park. Later named Highland 
Park, this land occupied a highpoint overlook- 
ing the city and the southern tier hills. Olm- 
sted was enlisted to design a system of parks 
for Rochester, including North Park (now Sen- 
eca Park) and South Park (now Genesee Val- 
ley Park). Considering the interest that local 
nursery owners had invested in tree cultivation, 
Olmsted designed Highland Park as an arbore- 
tum. Many of the specimens to be planted were 
donated by Ellwanger and Barry. Park Super- 
intendent Calvin Laney began acquiring addi- 
tional plants for the park, but it soon became 
clear that more horticultural help was required. 
Dunbar was hired in 1891 to oversee the 
plant collections in the park. He quickly forged 
relationships with other prominent horticultur- 
ists, including Charles Sprague Sargent of the 
Arnold Arboretum. The similarities between 
Highland and the Arnold are not just superfi- 
cial. Both arboreta were designed by Olmsted 
and were envisioned as features within larger 
park systems. Both have the distinct feel of an 
Olmsted design, with curving paths following 
the contours of the landscape. 
Dunbar and the horticulturists who followed 
him maintained an active relationship with Sar- 
gent and others at the Arnold. For many decades, 
QUINN, M. 2021. THE RESILIENT TREES OF FLOWER CITY. ARNOLDIA, 78(5-6): 13-15 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, GEOGRAPHY AND MAP DIVISION 
