lanting in new areas will pay off in decades to come

By JAMES T. HAMMOND

The University of South Carolina is planting the seeds, so to speak, for a dramatic change in the tree line of downtown Columbia, as its campus pushes inexorably toward the Congaree River.

Already, hundreds of young trees, mostly oaks, have been planted below Assembly Street.

They easily can be overlooked today. Most are no more than 8 to 10 feet tall, and 2 to 4 inches in diameter. But in the next 20 to 30 years, they will rise among USC’s buildings and parking lots.

Trees Along Sumter Street

“The city has an active tree-planting program, as well,” Coble said. “It will make a major difference in the future. Green space and trees add to the livability of the city.”

A long-range master plan for the campus, due in the next few weeks, will include a major landscaping component, USC officials said. Landscaping on the campus has not previously had such a plan.

The university’s expanding campus will include major areas of green space, said Thomas Knowles, assistant director for landscaping and environmental services at USC. The current year’s budget for landscaping and grounds is $1.64 million, which includes maintenance and new planting.

“We are working to blend the old with the new, using trees and trails,” Knowles said. “Landscaping themes will be used to identify specific areas. Trees, art, green space will be an integral part of the plan.”

Today, about 90 different species of trees inhabit the USC campus.

The dominant canopy of the future will be a mix of native and introduced species, including Chinese elm, willow oak and Shumard oak.

“A lot of our native trees don’t necessarily do well in the man-made, urban environment of filled soils,” Knowles said.

The most common large species on campus today is the willow oak, a native subspecies. But Tommy Fallaw, USC’s landscaping manager, said variety is important so all the trees can’t be wiped out by an unforeseen disease, such as the Dutch elm disease of the 1930s.

USC works with the city to blend the university planting program with city rights of way, Knowles said.

Large stretches of the downtown area between the Horseshoe and the river will one day have tree-lined streets. Just in the area of the planned baseball stadium south of Blossom Street, USC’s conceptual drawings show eight to 10 blocks of tree-lined streets where today there are no trees.

David Rembert, a retired USC botany professor who for decades was the de facto tree expert on campus, said landscaping and tree planting today are very systematic and professional, where it once was haphazard.

“It really has become superior,” Rembert said. “I think we are really on top of the landscaping today.”

The staffers who maintain the trees on campus have their favorites. For Knowles, it’s the live oak he believes is the oldest tree on campus. He tells a story of standing under it after a major ice storm as crews cleared broken branches. Moments after he moved away from the tree, a large limb snapped off and landed on the sidewalk where he had been standing.

Fallaw’s favorite is a large deodar, a cedar, at the corner of the Russell House on Greene Street.

USC has received national recognition for its landscape management, winning a Green Star Grand Award and being designated an arboretum by the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta.

The Green Star program is a nationally competitive program, sponsored by Landscape Management magazine and the Professional Grounds Management Society. The annual awards program brings national recognition to grounds that are maintained with a high degree of excellence and recognizes individual efforts that result in quality landscaping.

The historic part of campus also has benefited from the landscaping program. Until just a few years ago, a large green space behind Preston College, just off the Horseshoe, was covered by a dilapidated building and parking spaces. Today, those features have been removed, replaced by grass and ringed by nine Shumard oaks. Today they are only 12 to 15 feet tall and about 3 inches in diameter. But in 30 to 50 years, their crowns will touch, shading a “pocket park” between the rows of buildings on the south side of the Horseshoe and on Greene Street.

USC Landscaping Services tends to about 4,000 trees. At least 200 of them have been planted in the past three years. Over the next five years, Fallaw estimates, his department will plant at least 100 additional trees per year. The landscaping teams typically replace one to two dozen trees a year because of disease, old age or reconstruction on campus.

USC uses a computerized inventory of campus trees and geographic-information systems technology to manage trees and to plan for the planting of future trees and maintenance. The university has a tree-selection guide that is used by landscape architects and other grounds personnel when landscaping is planned for the campus, Knowles said.

USC’s historic Horseshoe is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Robin Waites, executive director of the Historic Columbia Foundation, said she welcomed the university’s tree-planting program.

“Columbia used to be quite a garden city. This is certainly reflective of the city’s past,” Waites said.