Garden Club of New Haven
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                      The New Haven Green, the City's Elms and the Garden Club of New Haven

       In 1640, two years after the Colony of New Haven was founded, surveyor John Brockett, said to be the first city planner in British North America, laid out an ambitious and unique city plan of nine squares, with the center square reserved for public use. This central square has been known as the New Haven Green since 1779.  

       The first elms were planted on the New Haven Green in 1686, as gifts from a parishioner to the Reverend James Pierpont on the occasion of building his new house at Elm and Temple Streets.  Pierpont was the minister of First Church, now known as Center Church on the Green, from 1685 to 1714.  In 1784, James Hillhouse, a large landowner and civic leader, began the first public tree-planting program in America to beautify the city.  Using his own funds, he systematically planted American elms on the Green and throughout New Haven, and they were incorporated as a symbol of the city and the Green. Ever since then, New Haven has been known as “The Elm City.”  Elms can achieve heights of up to 100 feet and have a strongly arched vase shape, creating an almost cathedral-like streetscape. 

        The Green is probably the only privately owned public space in the country.  In 1805 the then numerous owners of the Green, all descendants of the original settlers, established a self-perpetuating governing body of five individuals called the Committee of the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Lands in New Haven.  The Proprietors effectively hold the land in trust for the benefit of the people of New Haven. 

         In 1910, Frederick Law Olmsted, a nationally prominent landscape architect, and Cass Gilbert, a nationally prominent architect of public buildings, developed civic planning guidelines for the Civic Improvement Commission in New Haven. They specifically stated that the elms on the Green needed to be maintained and renewed. 
     
          In the 1930s, Dutch elm disease caused massive tree loss in urban areas throughout the country, and New Haven’s elms were not spared.  By the 1980s, despite planting on the Green by the Garden Club of New Haven since the 1950s, many of the American elms on the Green were in serious decline due to attrition, Dutch elm disease and several hurricanes and devastating ice storms.  The Garden Club worked with the City, the Proprietors and civic leaders to raise $100,000 to repopulate the Green with elms and with specimen trees on the Upper Green. As a result, over 50 new disease resistant elm trees were planted. The resulting endowment supports ongoing planting and care for trees on the Green and other public parks in New Haven. 


​Please take a look at a Slide Show illustrating the Club's work from the 1980s and continuing  today with our  2013 Tree Project.
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Updated April 7, 2021