Q&Amy: Why were trees cut down at Furman?

The saws have been roaring, and the dead and dying trees have been crashing to the ground in a hail of broken branches and brittle leaves.

More than just wood and sawdust, though, these trees represented a culture, an identity for the the land that has been their home these last 60 years, and their felling reverberates through more than just the surrounding earth.

But even as some great arbors reach their end at Furman University, the school is embarking on a program to ensure that the campus retains its tree-shaded traditions for generations to come.

"We're standing on the shoulders of other people who have planned this and let it grow and mature and look better every day," said Scot Sherman, Furman's director of campus planning. "I don't want to interrupt that history."

Furman has been recognized by Forbes and others as being among the country's, maybe even the world's, most beautiful campuses.

Sherman said the school is lovingly dubbed Furman State Park for its lush gardens, ample trails and centerpiece lake that draw a regular parade of visitors. The trees, which number in the thousands, play no small role.

But they're dying.

Many of Furman's trees were planted when the college was moved from downtown to its current location in the mid-1950s. To transform a barren field into a picturesque campus, the school planted hundreds of easily accessible, fast-growing trees — varieties like water oaks, laurel oaks and willow oaks.

"Fast-growing trees like laurel oaks have a lifespan of perhaps 50 to 70 years, and that's where a lot of these trees are right now," said Ken Knox, owner of The Tree Doctor in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and a consulting arborist who has worked with Furman since the 1980s.

"They get old. They get dried out. They get decayed. They become fragile. They become very prone to breakage. Even on calm days, they'll break apart from the overextended branches," he said.

The school spends a significant amount each year just maintaining the aging trees, Redderson said, pruning dead branches to avoid potential safety hazards.

Each winter break for the last few years has seen the removal and replanting of several trees around Furman's campus, notably at the main entrance and along the oak-lined main mall just inside the gates.

The break is a good time, not only because of the reduced traffic around campus, but also for the new trees themselves, which are dormant in the winter and tolerate the move easier, Sherman said.

This year about 20 trees were taken down, including six at the main gate and 10 or so along the mall, as well as a few near Judson Hall, a lakeside residence building that was original to the campus. The work raised questions in the minds of visitors about why these stately trees were cut down.

"The trees that we removed were in very poor condition," said Jeff Redderson, associate vice president of facility services at the school. "They're reaching the end of their normal life."

Furman University officials have known this was coming for the last 10 to 15 years, he said. They're working on a long-term plan that will honor the history of the campus' aesthetic and plan for its future viability without sacrificing the beauty of the present.

"That's our game plan is to try to be safe about it and not visually impact the campus terribly, but over a period of many years, we will need to replace all these trees," Sherman said.

Instead of continuing to remove trees on an as-needed basis, campus planners are working on a long-term replacement plan to present to Furman's Board of Trustees, Redderson said. It will create a kind of batting order for tree removal and replacement over the next decade.

"If I could be here 50 years from now, I've got to believe the impact will be really, really good," Sherman said.

When the campus was built, the mall was populated with about 225 trees. Seventy-five of those have already been removed due to age, condition or acts of nature. The ice storm of 2005, Sherman said, was a watermark event when many of the aging trees suffered extensive damage.

Replacing the trees isn't as simple as grabbing a new one from the local nursery.

Starting over with tiny saplings would too greatly detract from the campus character for decades to come, Sherman said. So the university plants 30- or 40-foot tall trees, oaks that are already a dozen years into growing but have centuries more of life in them.

"When springtime comes and the leaves come out, people drive right under those trees and they're no wiser. They don't realize they've been replaced," Sherman said. "It's a pretty seamless impression if you're not paying close attention."

The new trees are varieties with stronger wood and lifespans of upwards of 200 years, ensuring this lengthy — and expensive — process doesn't have to be repeated in another 60 years.

One of those trees, an overcup oak, was planted days ago at Furman's main gate.

A team from Tree Spaders of Greenville arrived with the 27-foot tall tree on the back of a truck, and within 30 minutes, it was in the ground as if it had always been there.

Owner Craig Rice and Sherman crouched down beside the new tree to make sure it lined up perfectly with the others in the row.

It was 3 or 4 inches off, so Rice widened the hole with a backhoe and nudged the tree over.

"These will be here 300 years, so we want to get it right," Sherman said.

Though the mall and main gate are arguably the most visible part of Furman's tree collection, the school's dedication to its canopy doesn't start and end there. The campus received official accreditation last year as an arboretum by ArbNet and has enjoyed recognition in the Arbor Day Foundation's Tree Campus USA program for several years.

TreesGreenville has worked with the school to plant more than 50 new legacy trees — trees that will live 100 years or more — on campus since 2008, said executive director Joelle Teachey.

"Furman University campus has such a phenomenal mature canopy that we're getting air quality benefits, stormwater benefits," she said. "It is a healthy part of our urban and community forest."

A campus Trees Committee meets twice a year to discuss the trees, their maintenance and their role as an educational resource, said Yancey Fouche, associate director of Furman's Shi Center for Sustainability.

"People are asking questions and thinking about these issues and continue to care about the aesthetic and the natural health of our campus," she said.