New tree No. 1,000 and counting

“If a tree dies, plant another in its place.” Linnaeus, a father of modern ecology, said it, and OARDC’s Secrest Arboretum is doing it. The 120-acre Wooster plant collection, a part of our college, recently planted its 1,000th new tree to replace the 1,600 lost to last year’s tornado, and friends and officials paused to celebrate.

I went back to Ohio, but my Bryson City ginkgo was gone

See who comes back this spring when OSU’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, part of OARDC, holds a free public bird walk April 9. Northward migrating birds, such as tree swallows and eastern phoebes, should be among the arrivals, who may find the place looks different than when they left. A tornado hit the arboretum last September — after many summer birds had gone south — and turned more than 1,000 trees (on about 30 of the arboretum’s 120 acres) into virtual toothpicks.