Campus

Caring for Our Natural Legacy

On any given day, you can find Andy Lambert tending to the needs of one of Puget Sound’s 1,511 trees.

He’s one of the groundskeepers responsible for keeping our trees healthy and growing—and he takes that job personally.

“My favorite tree is the one I’m working on,” Lambert says. “Each tree is an individual, so there’s a relationship you form with it as you’re pruning.”

Caring for the campus’s trees is no easy task, but it’s one that Lambert has enjoyed for 15 years. Recently, he’s worked on the west side of campus, carefully pruning birch trees near Warner Gym, paper bark maples outside of Wyatt Hall, and elms along Union Avenue. Lambert pays particular attention to the youngest trees on campus; guiding their growth and development while they’re establishing themselves ensures each tree remains strong and healthy as it matures.

Andy Lambert pointing at a tree specimen

Andy Lambert, Puget Sound Groundskeeper

"Tree limbs are a lot like bones—the more they're used, the stronger they become."

This good work, coupled with the grounds crew’s ongoing stewardship of our campus trees and the university’s commitments to environmental justice and sustainability, recently earned Puget Sound a 2019 Tree Campus Higher Education program distinction from the Arbor Day Foundation. For Grounds Manager Phil Hancock, the recognition affirms the importance of caring for the trees on campus.

“Sustainability is top of mind with everything we’re doing,” he says. “We want to be good stewards of the environment, so it’s a point of pride for us to be a certified tree campus.”

To maintain the university’s status as a tree campus for eight consecutive years, Hancock and his team offer service-learning opportunities to educate about sustainable tree maintenance, observe Arbor Day with an annual tree-planting ceremony, update Puget Sound’s online canopy map, and work with an advisory board of invested campus and community members to implement a detailed tree-care plan.

When possible, Hancock and the grounds crew members do what they can to save trees through transplanting, supporting limbs to stave off storm damage, stopping the spread of disease and infestation, and thinning older trees to allow saplings to get direct sunlight rather than cutting them down. In many cases, damaged trees are able to make a full recovery and go on to thrive for many decades with the proper care.

“Tree limbs are a lot like bones—the more they’re used, the stronger they become,” Lambert says. “We want to encourage that strong growth, so you may see a tree with a strap on one limb. The strap allows it to move during a high-load situation, like a wind or rain storm, but gives it a stopping point so it doesn’t break.”

Groundskeeper Andy Lambert, in front of a row of Chinese elms near Harned Hall

Saving trees that might otherwise be removed is about more than aesthetics. For Hancock, it’s about preserving our university’s history. That’s why the tree-care plan includes a long-term vision for replacing trees that die with new plants that will fill the same ecological niche as their predecessors.

The careful attention paid to each tree by the grounds crew is evident all over campus, where trees representing 119 species contribute to the overall character of Puget Sound. Whether he’s clearing branches in the President’s Woods to allow more light to reach younger plants or directing the growth of newly planted cherry trees, Lambert is grateful to be part of a long line of caretakers who have ensured that today’s trees can be enjoyed by future generations of Loggers.

“Some of these trees have the potential to be here 500 years from now,” Lambert said. “They add so much to the beauty of the campus and provide great wildlife habitat. All we have to do is protect them and give them what they need to keep growing.”

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