Tower Hill
The First Twenty-five Years
The Entry Garden at Tower Hill
TOWER HILL
The First Twenty-five Years
SELECTIVE MEMORIES OF A BENIGN DICTATOR
John W. Trexler
TIDE POOL PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2017 by John Trexler
Published in eBook format by TidePool Press
TidePool Press
6 Maple Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
Unless otherwise noted, the photos in this book are reproduced courtesy of the Collections of Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Boylston, MA, and the private collection of John Trexler and Robert Zeleniak.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9978-4821-2
WITH APPRECIATION
Robert Zeleniak
Trex and Emily
Philip Coen
Thomas Buchter
Clarence McKenzie Lewis
Marco Polo Stufano
Norma Mortenson
IN RECOGNITION OF
The Worcester County Horticultural Society on the occasion of its 175th Anniversary
John leading a tour of the Lawn Garden, 1988
Foreword
In an age that worships creative disruption and entrepreneurial imagination, surprisingly little attention is given to the practice and virtues of reinvigorating venerable institutions. Sustaining older institutions and keeping them fit, relevant and forward-looking in a fast changing landscape offers social continuity and the communal benefit of prudent risk-taking and social change. Worcester, Massachusetts—New England’s second largest city—is something of an exemplar as a number of the city’s pre-eminent cultural and civic institutions, whose origins were in the nineteenth century, remain leaders in their respective fields today. Examples include the American Antiquarian Society (1812), the Children’s Friend (Worcester Children’s Friend Society 1849), the Ecotarium (Worcester Natural History Society 1884), the Worcester Historical Museum (Worcester Society of Antiquity 1875) and the Worcester Art Museum (1898). As progressive as each of these institutions has been and continues to be, it would be hard to match the transformational resilience of the Worcester County Horticultural Society (WCHS) which was founded in 1842—with roots in the Worcester Agricultural Society (1819). Relocated in 1986 from downtown Worcester to a magnificent site twelve miles away in the countryside of Boylston and officially retaining its original name, WCHS is now far better known as Tower Hill Botanic Garden. John Trexler, the animating spirit who led the transformation, has written an account that is fascinating in its own right, but which may inspire others to take a fresh look at the untapped vitality tucked away in older institutions.
Constructive institutional change is never easy. It takes vision, persuasiveness, support from diverse quarters, persistence and more than a little of what might be called romantic pragmatism. Above all it takes leadership, a “benign dictator” as John Trexler refers to himself in the title of this wonderful memoir. Horticulture can be ephemeral in the particular—a flower’s prime bloom is lovely but momentary—but when considered as a system, as a botanic garden, then horizons shift from weeks to decades and well beyond. Writing about gardens a century ago, Alice Morse Earle, a Worcester native and historian of early America, said, “Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination … to be content with the present and not striving about the future is fatal.” A lover of plants and gardens, John Trexler reveled in their presence from an early age, but his distinguishing gifts have been his ability to imagine the future and his vigilance in bringing that vision to life.
John’s arrival in Worcester in 1984 as the new Executive Director of WCHS was inauspicious. His immediate predecessor, Fred Roberts, had served for less than half a year before moving on to what would became a distinguished twenty-two year career as director of Pierre S. du Pont’s Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square. When John arrived in Worcester—inadvertently on a holiday—the Society had just two other employees, an outmoded facility in downtown Worcester, thoughts of moving outside the city, and no chairman of the board. John used the holiday to read through nearly one hundred and fifty years of the Society’s annual reports. Even if the future looked bleak, the history was intriguing.
Formally established in 1842, WCHS had its origins in the Worcester Agricultural Society which had been founded in 1819 to promote not only agriculture and livestock, but local manufacture as well. The Agricultural Society became a victim of its own success as its annual cattle show was a social high point of the year and its horse races attracted betting and public drinking, which detracted from its higher minded original goals of education and the promotion of local products. The founding of WCHS—interestingly, initiated and sustained by more than a few leaders of the Worcester Agricultural Society—was a testament to Worcester’s nascent emergence as a steam, rather than water-powered, manufacturing center. Commercial prosperity in finance, manufacturing and trade was surpassing agriculture in the county. As was already evident in England and to a lesser extent through much of coastal America, gardening was superceding farming as a community pursuit. And one need not be rich to garden. Writing in 1936, Albert Farnsworth called the period from 1830-1860 as the “Golden Age” of gardening in Worcester, a period when he noted “everybody had a garden.” That might be a contestable claim, but it certainly made the 1842 WCHS mission of “advancing the science and encouraging and improving the practice of horticulture” both timely and popular.
Worcester County has a long agricultural tradition, even if it lacks an agricultural identity relative to, say, the Pioneer Valley or the South Coast in Massachusetts or the Hudson Valley in New York. The recent USDA census of direct farm to consumer sales by county offers the surprising fact that Worcester County ranks sixth in the United States in total dollar volume. Sweet corn, tomatoes and lettuce play a role, but it’s really due to the diversity of products grown. Orchards and nurseries throughout Worcester County combine with farm stands to create a remarkably robust, if under-recognized, horticultural region.
What does all this
