Restoring Our City’s Beauty
By: Ilse García Romero
On November 2, 2024, Greensboro Beautiful and Bennett College volunteers planted 195 native North Carolina trees during the “Our Roots Run Deep” campus event in celebration of the university’s 150th anniversary.
As the 2024 recipient of GBI’s annual NeighborWOODS program, Bennett College worked with Urban Forestry co-chairs Keith Francies and Randal Romie, to strategize the restoration of the historical canopy on campus. The community tree-planting event was based on the 2006 Campus Heritage Plan, which outlines the complete history of the campus buildings and landscape since 1938, when then-president David Dallas Jones hired architect Charles Gillette to reimagine the Bennett grounds.
The result was a novel plan to plant native trees instead of purely ornamental trees to line the green quadrangle between the campus Chapel and the President’s house; however, the ambitious plan was never realized. Sadly, Bennett College lost many trees in its canopy over the years to age, pests, and harsh weather.
In honor of the original landscaping plans, Greensboro Beautiful and over 300 total volunteers restored the Bennett College 5-acre campus to its lush glory as most of the country turned back their clocks for daylight savings.
Per the Campus Heritage Plan, the four pillars of historical landscaping are Preservation, Rehabilitation, Restoration and Reconstruction. With those principles in mind, everything from the type of trees to the location of the plantings and the approach to planting was methodical. According to Bennett College News, “the placement of each tree was carefully planned to create groves and privacy screening.”
The native tree selection planted included white oaks, willow oaks, cherry laurels, sugar maples, water oak, Carolina sentinel hollies, Armstrong maples, teddy bear magnolias, and Southern magnolias, one of Bennett’s emblems.
It Takes A Village
The restoration efforts at Bennett College on November 2 were truly a team effort among Bennett College students, alumnae, faculty, and staff, as well as the City of Greensboro Department of Parks and Recreation, the City of Greensboro Office of Sustainability & Resilience, Greensboro Beautiful Executive Committee and Board Members, Guilford County Extension Service and their Master Gardeners.
The joint efforts also included students from Guilford College, NC A&T, and UNCG, organizations such as Citizen’s Climate Lobby, Kingdom of Youth Inc, Las Amigas Inc, Lewis Gives, and the National Association of Black Journalists, and community support from Maxie B’s Restaurant, the T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon Society, 811’s Safety Sam, Claire O’Brien and Daniel Smith from Brooks-Pierce Attorneys, Dunlap Landscape Service, Biscuitville, Coca-Cola Consolidated, and industry professionals from Davey Tree New Garden Landscaping, Greensboro Science Center, Seay Partners Landscape Architects, and Designature Landscape Architects.
Additionally, throughout the planning process, Randal Romie connected with former Bennett Dean Mary Anne Scarlett, whose parents worked on campus in its earlier years: her father a grounds manager and her mother a professor. Dean Scarlett grew up playing under the trees her father planted, and vividly remembers the tornado of 1936, when she was 5 years old, which took down many of the campus trees when it hit Greensboro.
Together, all of these key community players successfully restored the integrity of the Bennett College quadrangle, in alignment with the goals of NeighborWOODS. In the last 24 years, the NeighborWOODS program has donated and planted over 3,500 free trees to families and businesses in Greensboro that have experienced tree canopy loss.