Maggie Redfern, the Arboretum's assistant director, is sharing her love of New London's trees

May 12, 2017 12:00 am • Last Updated: May 15, 2017 3:32 pm

Maggie Redfern, assistant director of the Connecticut College Arboretum, talks about a stand of pine trees in Williams Memorial Park in New London Monday. (Sean D. Elliot/The Day)
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Maggie Redfern, the Arbortum's assistant director, is leading tree walks, too

New London — Ask Maggie Redfern about her namesake plant, and she’ll tell you she’s learning about the different varieties of ferns but is no expert.

“I’m working on making my name true,” she said.

But ask her instead about trees — specifically New London’s trees — and Redfern quickly offers the names of a few favorites. There are the Katsura trees on Federal Street that emit a pleasant malty smell in autumn and the Chinese scholartrees on Meridian Street. Then there are the dozen or so mature American elms around the city that survived Dutch elm disease and the hurricane of 1938 that wiped out most of their species, and the threadleaf falsecyprus and weeping European beech, both at Ye Antientist Burial Ground.

“It looks like the perfect tree to be in a cemetery,” Redfern, assistant director of the Connecticut College Arboretum, said of the beech. “It just looks like a sad tree, with its drooping branches and its huge canopy, about 80 feet across.”

Since coming to the arboretum 2-1/2 years ago, Redfern has been enthusiastically sharing her knowledge and love of plants and landscapes — but especially trees — by leading walks around the city and at the arboretum. This spring, she will be leading two such events, a tree walk on May 20 and a Connecticut Trails Day hike of the Bolleswood section of the arboretum on June 3.

“We get residents, master gardeners, members of New London Landmarks, people just interested in gardens in the city, people new to New London and 8-year-olds and 10-year-olds,” Redfern said of her tree walks. “The fact that 40 people will go on a walk to look at trees shows how many people are interested in trees.”

Redfern has led tree walks at Cedar Grove Cemetery, along different routes in downtown New London and is planning one in the Hodges Square neighborhood this fall. A student of architecture and landscape preservation, she honed her knowledge of trees while working at the Arnold Arboretum, the Harvard University property that is the nation’s oldest public arboretum.

“It was an amazing place to learn about trees,” she said.

She was drawn to the Connecticut College Arboretum, she said, by its emphasis on native plants, and she has quickly grown to love the city, where she can bike to her office from her home on Montauk Avenue.

“I love that this city is so small and yet has so many different habitat types, from ravines to salt marshes to rocky ledges,” she said.

On her tree walks, she delights in introducing people to a feature of the city they may see every day but never stop to notice. Incorporating research from old photographs and post cards, a tree inventory prepared in 1993 by Connecticut College students and other accounts, she describes each tree on her walk as part of a larger history. She also makes note of places where more trees would beautify the streetscape, like the meridian along Gov. Winthrop Boulevard.

“The inventory found 55 different species of trees in New London,” she said. “People just don’t know there are so many different trees in New London and opportunities for planting trees.”

During a sample of her walk one recent morning, Redfern began outside the public library, pointing out two callery pear trees, Asian natives planted by the Friends of the Library group to replace elm trees felled by the 1938 hurricane. Across the street next to New London Superior Court, she spotted a grove of honey locusts that create a shady oasis for a picnic table. Outside the courthouse a row of Zelkova trees, another Asian species, grow along the curb.

“They’re a decent street tree,” she said. “Landscape architects like them for their vase shape, the same shape of the elm trees.” But old photographs of the city, showing corridors of elms arching over the streetscape, leave her lamenting the demise of the native majestic beauties. One elm on Granite Street, standing some 50 feet tall, offered a glimpse of what an entire canopy of these trees must have looked like.

"Compare the experience of standing under this tree to standing under those pear trees by the library," she said. "It's spectacular."

At Williams Memorial Park on Broad Street, Redfern recounts a bit of its history.

“This was the site of the second burial ground in New London,” she said. When development came to that part of town, the graves were located to Cedar Grove. In the 1890s, the park was laid out, possibly based on plans created in the offices of famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead.

“I love this grove of evergreens here,” she said, approaching a stand of tall, stately pines. “It’s so unexpected to find them in an urban park. They’re Japanese false cypress.”

Across the park, she sees a white oak planted during the nation’s bicentennial celebration in 1976 from a seedling of Connecticut’s Charter Oak, several sycamores and an unusual dogwood in full flower.

“It’s a beautiful native dogwood with a double flower,” she said. “I’ve consulted all the dogwood books at the arboretum, and I have not yet figured out what that cultivar (subtype) might be.

“But doesn’t it just dance beautifully in the wind?” she said, watching as a breeze swayed the branches.

j.benson@theday.com