A Brief History of the Trees of Reed College


1909 Reed College founded on 86 acres of Crystal Springs Farm, purchased through the estate of Simeon Gannett Reed
1911 First classes held.
1933 First major planting of trees on the Reed campus. (A list of the types of trees that were planted is available on-line.)
1938 Una V. Davies writes Vascular Plants of the Reed Campus, a complete botanical inventory, as her undergraduate thesis in the Biology Department. She notes the existence of a large arboretum where Vollum Hall now stands.
1940 Writing in the February issue of Reed College Notes, Demorest Davenport (a young biology professor) describes the trees on the Reed campus. He notes that two ginkgos have just been transplanted from the arboretum to either side of the walk leading up to the library. (The Full Text of his article is available here on-line.)
1984 William L. Owen ('59) donates to the college a thorough study identifying the relative value and condition of the campus trees. As a result of this study, a specific budget category is created for an ongoing tree maintenance program.
1992 Phyllis Reynolds and Stan Lindstrom complete a thorough taxonomic identification of the trees on the Reed campus, including maps. This was the origin of our electronic database.
1994 The Trees of Reed book is produced. (See Townsend Angell's introduction to that text for a full account of the process.)
1997 The initial "Trees of Reed" website goes on-line.
2001-2002 Niels Proctor spends six months checking the location and identification of every tree in the landscaped areas of campus (more than 1,000 in all). He creates 33 new color maps, writes new descriptions of the campus, takes several hundred photographs, and renovates the "Trees" website.