Gardening enthusiast Carole Zimmer leads other Park Place residents around the yard to observe and learn about the trees on the property. The effort led to a project of naming and obtaining signs to identify all the trees.
What makes Park Place so enchanting? It starts with the campus: its landscaping and its grounds.
An anonymous Park Place resident offered a donation that would help transform the campus into what might pass for a miniature arboretum. He is in the habit of walking the campus for exercise and often wondered about the many tree species. He offered to underwrite the cost of signs to identify the trees, an idea that would help enhance the Park Place grounds in a major way. After a blessing from Executive Director Beth McGowan-Welch, the donor enlisted two fellow residents to help his vision come to life.
Park Place residents Jane Foulser and Carole Zimmer have both always had a love of gardening and nature. Jane is an active member of the Elmhurst Garden Club, and Carole is responsible for the Hawthorne School Prairie Garden. The two became involved in the tree-naming project and started literally from the ground up.
Together, they tracked down the original plan for the Park Place campus to identify what had been planted initially. Through countless walks through the grounds, calling in the help of a local landscaper, and diligently studying various plans and plants, the pair was able to help identify 22 different tree species that call the Park Place grounds home. Once the tree species were identified and counted, Jane and Carole worked to order signs featuring both the common and Latin name for each tree and map out a route for a tour of the trees, easily allowing others to enjoy the views.
Calling on the Park Place community, Jane and Carole got help from the resident Train Club to assemble the 55 total metal signs and stakes while the maintenance crew helped install them around the identified trees. Guided walking tours for residents began in July and are helping foster a love of nature and gratitude for Park Place’s impressive grounds.
At Park Place, the walking tours have been affectionally dubbed “Tree Treks.” The Tree Treks have helped the donor realize his vision of providing Park Place residents with added education and enjoyment when walking the campus.
For Jane and Carole, the tree-naming project was a labor of love: a love of nature and the Park Place community.
If you would like to take a Tree Trek on the Park Place grounds, contact them at [email protected].
This story was submitted by Park Place of Elmhurst.
