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Elms Making a Comeback in New Housing Communities

Disease-resistant elm trees are being incorporated into a number of new Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND) communities, according to the Elm Research Institute, a non-profit organization in Keene, NH, whose mission is to restore a portion of the 100 million American elms that succumbed to Dutch elm disease in the U.S. starting in the 1930s.

Since its introduction in 1983, 250,000 American Liberty Elms have been planted in more than 1,000 communities around the country in elm restoration efforts and new construction landscaping.

“Now we’re seeing a new area of interest,” says the institute’s founder, John P. Hansel. “Developers are building new neighborhoods that reflect our country’s past, and they’re recognizing the American Liberty Elm as the tree that complements their themes.”

The institute reported last week that the elms will be taking root in these developments:

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• The Village of Clark Brook, in Rochester, NH. Half of the 130 acres of the village will be open space, with houses ranging in size from 1,200-2,000 square feet. Developer Peter Whitman says the architecture will be “New England vernacular” and that the community will be oriented to pedestrians instead of cars. Whitman planted one of the elms in honor of his father’s 80th birthday and realized that “it tied into what I was doing professionally. It made sense, in designing a TND community, to have a traditional streetscape tree, and there’s nothing that epitomizes what I am trying to do more than the American Liberty Elm.” Groundbreaking on the first phase of Clark Brook is scheduled for this fall.
• Elliott Pond, in Ramona, CA. Jim Hagey, whose Red Leaf Village Company specializes in building walkable communities, says the new development will mix large and small houses. The pre-Craftsman and Spanish-style homes will all have big front porches, garages on rear alleys and elms on the streets. Although he is about one-and-a-half years away from breaking ground on the project, he has already planted one street with the trees, which are proving surprisingly hardy under the area’s hot and dry conditions.
• In the Five Points area of San Antonio, Jose Gonzalez’s company, Urban Collaborative, has been working with the non-profit San Antonio Alternative Housing Corporation on a cottage neighborhood of seven or eight 900-1,000-square-foot bungalows next to an apartment complex that is similar in size and style. Construction on the bungalows will begin near the end of this year and the apartments are already in place. Elms are being mixed with native trees for streetscape plantings. “It’s important, given our climate and how hot it can get, to provide shade,” said Gonzalez.

The Elm Research Institute supplies elms from its nursery in Keen and other satellite nurseries, and can work with developers and landscape architects to grow trees for future plantings while developments are still in the planning stage.

For more information, click here or call 603-358-6198.
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