The wedding tree
Growing a relationship, ecosystems, community, and memories
First comes the ceremony. Then comes the tree. The two went together like love and marriage. The marching band added the soundtrack. The rest is all about growth.
I’m talking about my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding party earlier this month and their decision to plant a Bur oak tree in the middle of a city as a symbol of their love and a commitment to the environment. It also became a mini education in urban forestry and a recognition that our cities must commit to planting more trees and engaging with the public to do so.
It comes down to memories and sustainability.
In September 2020, our son, Nate, and his longtime partner, Glasha, were married in a COVID wedding. Amid the heights of the pandemic, 14 of us gathered for an outdoor ceremony on a beach near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The joyous event was framed by the anger of California wildfires scorching millions of acres just a short drive from the wedding site.
The partnership was officially planted as the sky was intermittently darkened by smoke or reddened by flames.
Fast forward and after a handful of delays caused by the pandemic’s uncertainty, Glasha and Nate decided to go ahead with a party for their vaccinated friends and extended families this month in the Twin Cities, where Nate grew up, where both went to college, and where they met.
They also wanted to plant a tree to mark the occasion and the location and to contribute to the community’s environmental health. In my mind, they were balancing the devastation of those West Coast fires a year earlier with an oak tree in the nation’s heartland.
“The world needs more trees,” Nate told me. “We, our friends, and family can visit it for years to come and be reminded of that amazing weekend and all of the love we share.”
Glasha added: “For a tree to survive, it needs a whole ecosystem, just like we do. Our community helps sustain us and helps us grow. So, having everyone toss in soil, wood chips, and water during our wedding was a symbol for their role in our relationship. I hope that the tree — just like our relationship — grows and offers positive benefits to the rest of the ecosystem.”
Their one-year-later wedding celebration was scheduled for downtown Minneapolis, and they wanted their tree to be planted within walking distance of the venue so guests could march to the tree, honor it, and participate in its planting.
When Glasha made her initial calls to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, she learned that the person who spent five hours a week on such “memorial and tributes” tree planting was in the midst of retiring and wouldn’t be able to help with the possibility. Glasha kept running into dead ends.
As the father of the groom, I got into action and, fortunately, found Ralph Sievert, the Park Board’s director of forestry. Ralph’s son had been recently married and he thought the idea of planting a tree in an urban setting to mark the start of a marriage was a neat idea. Ralph went to work.
He found the perfect location in the shadow of the Guthrie Theater, near the wedding ceremony venue. He offered advice on the kind of tree we should buy that would be appropriate. He arranged for arborists Shane Lampman and Charles Goodwill — true experts and wonderful teachers — to be on hand to help Nate and Glasha plant the tree a few days before their wedding. Ralph was there to witness the planting and cheer everyone on. He also arranged for wood chips to be on-site on the day of the wedding so that others could be a part of offering nourishment to the lonely tree.
What I learned from Ralph was that the Park Board plants as many as 10,000 trees a year on boulevards and streets across Minneapolis. But when it comes to people wanting to contribute trees on their own, on their own dime, or public urban forestry education, there’s no full-time staff person.
When the Park Board’s budget deliberations begin soon, Ralph hopes that a position called “Forestry Outreach Coordinator” is included in the superintendent’s recommended budget. More than one-off tributes, this coordinator would work on a myriad of projects connecting people with trees. An emphasis would be youth involvement. One program that Sievert wants the city to support is the University of Minnesota’s Youth Engagement in Arboriculture (YEA) program. St. Paul has been partnering with YEA for years, but not Minneapolis.
I’d support that because I’ve seen what happens when the Park Board works with the public as it did on that Saturday a few weeks back.
The sun shone perfectly on the wedding day. The renewal of their vows was poetic. Glasha was dazzling in white. Nate actually wore a suit and tie.
Minutes after the ceremony, there was a parade from the wedding site to the tree, still young, trying so hard to grow. We arranged for a quintet from the University’s Marching Band to lead the way for about 80 wedding-guests-turned-marchers to the star of the show — the tree — four blocks away.
On the way, cars honked. Residents of nearby apartment buildings applauded and shouted from their balconies. We gathered and many of the marchers added wood chips to the tree’s site.
Together, ecosystems of sustainability and love were sanctified, and are bound to blossom.
We couldn’t have done it without the tree.
Update: On October 21, 2021, the Minneapolis Park Board superintendent’s budget for 2022 included a new position for Forestry Outreach Coordinator. That means more youth education around urban forestry and more opportunities for public plantings.
