New Haven Independent

That’s why at Bayview Park in City Point on a sparkling sunny Wednesday afternoon, neighbors young and old, kids from the nearby Micro-Society Magnet and Sound Schools, neighborhood activists like Kris Sainsbury (in the checked shirt), and city officials from parks director Bob Levine (with the shovel) to City Plan chief Karyn Gilvarg (behind him in the shades) gathered round the shovels and the new tree.

The new tree was sent off on its journey in the park — it has the potential to grow to 60 feet tall — with Tom Paine’s stem-winder of a poem “Liberty Tree,” recited by Cross sophomore Karissa Gatison. The elm is to replace a cottonwood that died apparently of I-95itis — although many other trees are flourishing despite the effects of the highway that divided the park in two more than 40 years ago.

The new American Liberty Elm is resistant to Dutch elm disease, of course, and was contributed to the city by the Elm Research Institute in Keane, New Hampshire. The contribution didn’t include shipping and other costs, which added up to $500.

According to Kris Sainsbury (on the left, with Levine and Doreen Larson-Oboysky of City Hall’s Livable City Initiative), the bill was footed by the getting-greener-and-greener Wal-Mart on Middletown Avenue.

Oboysky, the city’s greenspace and flower planting coordinator, said that another reason for the bigger-than-usual arboreal celebration is that the ceremony of the American Liberty Elm’s planting is the official means New Haven has chosen to celebrate Arbor Day.

“We are definitely on the road to becoming an official ‘Tree City,’” she added, “which is a designation offered by the Arbor Foundation. Oboysky wasn’t sure of the full list of requirements, but having an official Arbor Day celebration was one of them.

Karyn Gilvarg, doing the arboreal subbing for the mayor who, she said, was suddenly called to Hartford to “fight for PILOT [Payments in Lieu of Taxes] and for relief from your property taxes,” added, “We need to be planting trees not only today but also 364 other days a year.”

She said it was a particular personal pleasure to plant the tree both because it was her 30th anniversary. (She and her husband hadn’t decided yet how, in addition to the planting, to celebrate.)

Bob Larkin (shown in the background with the banner behind Gilvarg) was at the ceremony representing the 9th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, an association honoring the Civil War-era unit that trained on these grounds in 1861.

On the over-the-highway other half of Bayview Park is a 1903 monument to the regiment, Larkin said, which his group maintains. “We’re putting up another one in Vicksburg, where they fought,” he added, with a wave toward the south.

There was no fighting at the Arbor Day planting, only an eager scrambling on the part of participants, even tiny ones, like Alex Rivera, to put in ceremonial shovel-fuls of dirt. Little Alex’s pail represented soil and fireplace ash collected from a dozen houses along Greenwich Street and other areas around the park.

Alex and his family don’t even live in the neighborhood any more, but they love it so much, they come back often, said his dad, and they wanted to be here for the planting.

When it was over, the kids dispersed back to their classrooms, the officials to their offices, and the din of I-95 continued unabated. Bayview Park’s new American Liberty Elm was looking tall and healthy, and left alone to do whatever it is a tree does that makes humans act this fine way around it.

According to Bob Levine, there are, despite the past ravages of Dutch Elm disease, many elms still left in the city. Resistant American Liberty Elms, like this, are also planted on the Green.