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Norwalk-Wilton Tree Festival May 16, 2009 at Cranbury Park

The first Norwalk-Wilton Tree Festival is set for Cranbury Park May 16 (Saturday) as a collaboration of four partners in the two communities and a day of free-of-charge family fun to promote the urban forest.
The festival offers activities like a popular rope tree-climb for kids secured in harnesses and hard hats and showcases a diverse lineup of environmentally-minded exhibitors in pop-up tents and demonstrations by experts in tree care, a primer for the householder with trees on the property.
Adding the Wilton Garden Club and the Wilton Tree Committee to the sponsors this spring gives a two-community dimension to a day that has unfolded as the Norwalk Tree Festival the last two years, cosponsored by the Norwalk Tree alliance and the City of Norwalk as co-sponsors.
Dave Tracy, president of the Norwalk Tree Alliance, said: this year’s festival “will greatly expand the depth of exhibits and activities for grownups and kids alike. The association with Wilton has already added energy and new ideas to the planning and preparation. The location on the Norwalk-Wilton border is a big plus. We anticipate a major jump in attendance as the word gets out to more folks in Norwalk , Wilton and beyond.”
“The park, with its three-story, 18th century-style Gallaher Mansion, enables us to showcase the role of trees in our communities and gives us the space to accommodate the growing number of activities without overcrowding. It presents a stunning visual setting that reinforces our theme.”
“ Cranbury Park is also a special place in springtime and one of Norwalk ’s better kept secrets.”
Adds Jessica Kaplan, chairwoman of Wilton ’s tree committee and co-chairwoman of the conservation committee of the garden club: “The festival provides us with a wonderful opportunity to focus attention on our urban trees, a resource often overlooked. Wilton and Norwalk can learn so much from each other’s tree activities and enhance each community’s approach to protecting a valuable environmental asset, all while having fun and learning.”
Cranbury Park, north of the Merritt Parkway off Grumman Avenue near Route 7 covers 190 wooded acres with eight trails for hikers and bikers, a sculpture garden, a remarkable weeping beech with multiple trunks, an 18-hole Frisbee golf course and a covered pavilion where no-cost, picnic-style food and drink is to be made available, no matter the weather.
Ample parking is available on-site and door prizes are to be distributed at regular intervals over the course of the festival, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The festival falls three weeks after National Arbor Day activities April 24 at Cranbury Elementary School in Norwalk . Additional information about the festival is available by calling the City of Norwalk Customer Service Center at (203) 854-3200 or via e-mail at info@NorwalkTreeAlliance.org .

NTA Honored by Connecticut Tree Protective Association

Protecting the urban forest: The 2009 Arborist Citation awarded on January 15th by the Connecticut Tree Protective Association to the Norwalk Tree Alliance is displayed by NTA president Dave Tracy, center, flanked by Dan Landau, left, the vice president of the NTA, and Dick Aime, the secretary.

The citation goes to non-members of the CTPA for promotion of trees in Connecticut. More than 700 members of the CTPA attended the annual meeting of the association in Plantsville, CT when the award was presented. Additional information about the work of the NTA is available online at http://www.norwalktreealliance.org/.

Lighthouse Tree tops list of Norwalk Notables

A sycamore on Soundview Avenue called the Lighthouse Tree—once a beacon for sailors and the legendary site of a cache of arms for soldiers in the Revolutionary War—is among the Notable Trees being catalogued by a team from the Norwalk Tree Alliance. Dan Landau, the vice president of the alliance, and Jeanne McAndrew, the treasurer, have identified at least a dozen remarkable trees and they intend to document other extraordinary specimens as they screen Norwalk’s urban forest. Both have been volunteers with the NTA for five years and describe the appeal of the association in virtually the same terms--an affinity for the outdoors, the wonders of nature and an opportunity for give-something-back community service.

Like the historic tree at curbside on Sound Avenue, there are an estimated 20,000 trees on civic property in Norwalk and manifoldly more, perhaps as many as 100,000, on private property.
A computer-based instrument dubbed the TreeScout, under development by NTA’s president, physicist Dave Tracy, is ultimately to be used to conduct a full arboreal inventory.
In the interim, Landau and McAndrew are scouring the city for more exceptional trees, outfitted with a tape measure and an apparatus known as an inclinometer, based on tilt sensor technology that measures tree height using geometry. They have so far evaluated 70 of 90 trees nominated to the Norwalk Notable Tree Registry since 2002. On the list are 36 different species and several exceptional trees in each of the species.
What kind of trees are considered Notables? They might be uncommon because of advanced age or lofty height, resplendence and symmetry, rarity of the species, multiple trunks and unusual shape or historic heritage. Householders generally provide the leads for Landau and McAndrew. If there is a tree on your property that you feel might qualify as notable, you can reach McAndrew online at bjmca20@sbcglobal.net .

Lightning has sheared off the top of the Lighthouse Tree and today it stands diminished at 77 feet high. But it was reportedly once a towering point visible from Long Island Sound and served as a structural landmark for shipping. At night, a flagman supposedly climbed the tree and guided ships into Norwalk Harbor with a lantern.
Folklore has it that in the Revolutionary War soldiers hid their guns by burying the weapons at the base of the tree and covering the cache with a large rock that is still there today, virtually engulfed now by the growth of the trunk.

Among the other Notable Trees on the Norwalk list:

• An American beech on the grounds of the 1880 Selleck House on Berkley Street.
• A catalpa with a cantilevered limb on Perry Avenue.
• A black oak with four trunks on Highland Avenue.
• A weeping beech with multiple trunks in Cranbury Park, the site of the third annual Norwalk Tree Festival next May.
• A European beech on Bottswood Road, believed to have survived after the British burned Norwalk in 1779.

In a special category is a sourwood tree in Riverside Cemetery that qualifies as a state champion for its age and elegance, Norwalk’s only such designate. A complete listing of the specimens in the Norwalk Notable Tree Registry is available at the NTA Web site online at http://www.norwalktreealliance.org/ .

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