The first warm days of spring take my mind to the Brigham City graveyard.
Not only because most of my ancestors are buried there. Graveyards honor old plants just as they do our dead. This astonishing stand of Dwarf Umbrella Trees made me fall instantaneously in love with Dwarf Catalpas. I planted as many as I could in residential landscapes, so that in twenty or thirty years, someone might have the same fascinated pleasure of discovery.
Here’s what they look like fresh from the nursery.
And this is a more mature specimen. It’s basically a lollipop which never gets taller than 15’. Such enormous leaves on
a very short tree!
If you’re interested, here’s a fine blog on the giant Catalpa trees (Catalpa bignonioides) that fathered these Dwarf Umbrella Trees (Catalpa bignonioides ‘Nana’).
Contemplating “dwarf” while standing near these trees humbles the mind much as contemplating the graves does. At least for me. Time gives and takes away. Time creates, and reclaims its creations.
Contemplating “dwarf” while standing near these trees humbles the mind much as contemplating the graves does. At least for me. Time gives and takes away. Time creates, and reclaims its creations.
Dwarf Umbrellas are just one of the many many fantastic plants thriving under the care of the Brigham City Cemetery groundskeepers, and the strong granite slopes of the Wasatch Range in Utah.
Come May, when the hundreds of yards of lilac hedges bloom, I hope to be there with my family, visiting our loved ones.
Who never really leave us. Who dwell in beauty. Like lilac fragrance, and rough bark.
I just learned, reading an account of my great-great grandfather's life, that he was sexton of this cemetery, beginning in 1881. Thomas Meikle Forrest. "The sexton has charge of the city cemetery and provides or supervises the care, maintenance, and beautification of the cemetery, and the digging of graves." This quote comes from my cousin Jean Tyson's account of T. M. Forrest's life. If the Dwarf Umbrella Trees are more than one hundred years old, my own great-great grandfather may have planted them. No wonder I was smitten at first sight!
I know there is a Forrest Street in Brigham City. Perhaps it was named for Thomas Meikle and his love of his namesake: trees.
If you want to feel the earth turn, this video is more time well spent . . .
