Lisa Ferrel is an arborist and a driving force behind the creation of the Chesterfield County government complex arboretum.
After the campus of the Chesterfield County government complex was accredited as a certified arboretum in May 2019, Lisa Ferrel got photos of the Lorax, the Dr. Seuss eco-warrior, in her inbox.
“One friend called me the Lisax,” says the slender, bandana-wearing arborist who led the effort to turn the county’s civic heart into a place that “speaks for the trees.”
If you live in Chesterfield, you likely have visited the government campus along Courthouse Road at Iron Bridge Road; it’s where you go to court, pay taxes, find a dog or receive assistance. County law agencies and fire services, utilities, mental health services, and the parks and recreation department are some of the agencies headquartered here.
It’s a one-stop shop for most county services, but you’ll have to do a bit of a search to find the arboretum. There are no directional signs for it on campus, and no regular tours are offered of the fledgling fruit trees. Most of the specimens can be found growing in medians, between service roads, and along flag circles and loops. Many have yet to grow 3 feet tall. “Our mantra here is ‘right tree, right place,’” Ferrel says, pointing out where, in various stages of growth, visitors will find 21 varieties of fruit trees, four varieties of nut trees and two fruiting shrubs. There also are beech trees, oaks, pawpaws and hickories. “We plant them and water them,” she says. “And then we let the trees be the trees.”
“We attended a few tree conferences and heard from other municipalities and parks around the country,” Tuttle says. “Most of this we were doing already. So making this an arboretum was only to help spotlight what we’ve been doing, and to expand it. Lisa looked into it, and we liked what we saw.”
There are nine accredited arboretums — botanical gardens of trees — listed in the official Morton Registry for Virginia. Chesterfield’s arboretum is a Level I garden, as is Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Depending on size and criteria, arboretum certification can range up to Level IV (Arlington National Cemetery is a Level III). But making the Chesterfield campus a certified arboretum wasn’t just about showing off, Ferrel says, “it was also to have some protection of the trees here from future construction.”
Tuttle agrees. “We’re looking at what we can do to take the outdoor setting of this office park to the next level and be greener and more self-sustaining.”
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(From left) Horticulture Shop Supervisor Tom Tuttle with Lisa Ferrel and horticulturist Doug White
Past and Future
Ferrel has led the arboretum effort, managing to do it while recovering from ovarian cancer. “I’m fine now,” says the woman who answers to “LiLi.” She gets a checkup every two months and takes a chemotherapy drug. “Before I was diagnosed, I had the idea of an arboretum, but I got sick before I could pursue it.”
Once she was back at work in November 2018, the arborist researched the arboretum accreditation program, which is run through Arb-Net, a company that sets the standards. “To qualify, you have to feature at least 25 labeled species, there has to be a governance group — and that’s us, the horticultural shop — and hold one public event a year highlighting the trees.”
“The response was fantastic,” White says of the arboretum’s first public event, a guided tree walk in June that brought out two dozen people. “People walked in the intense heat and were really interested in what we were doing. Very inquisitive, asking lots of questions, soaking up all of the knowledge. Lisa’s full of information and made it entertaining.”
The tour started at the Historic Chesterfield Courthouse, which dates from 1917 and stands on the site of the original 1749 structure. The government complex was built around this spot, which holds historic buildings that survive from the original county courthouse, which was also the site of a Revolutionary War prison and a training camp for the Continental Army.
The green is still shaded by a majestic oak that was planted in 1814 by a young boy named Lawson Nunnally. The so-named Nunnally Oak is in fine shape, Ferrel says, patting the icon. “We had a tree specialist from Canada come in and access its health a few years ago,” she says. The old boy looks feisty looming over the restful lawn. On this September day, it appears to be branch-punching the circa-1828 clerk’s office, the oldest public building in Chesterfield County.
Nearby, on a wide median, Ferrel approaches a sapling tagged with a tiny ground flag adorned with a scannable code that leads to information on the species at the website plant.net. ”It’s like a barcode,” she says. More than 50 of the trees, large and small, have these tags. “That’s an American beech tree that, one day, will be a heritage tree. Right now it’s only 4 feet tall, but one day it will be big. Maybe it will become the next Nunnally Oak.”
She looks at the little fella and laughs. “Obviously, it’s going to be awhile.”
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An oak leaf
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Arboretum trees are identified on small markers.
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The original bell from 1750 hangs in the tower on the old courthouse building (built in 1917).
An Idea, an Orchard
This all started with tree diapers.
In 2013, Ashland engineers Wei Zhang and his wife, Hailing Yang, Chinese immigrants who attended Virginia Tech, were testing a system they’d developed for tree fertilization. “We knew that Chesterfield wanted to plant an orchard,” Zhang says. They donated 10 fruit trees to the effort, and area nurseries provided 10 more. “And we asked if we could use the trees as a testing ground.”
Their invention was a collar-shaped apparatus that could absorb and retain water to hydrate plants and trees over long periods of time. The device was made of recycled diapers.
“Being parents of two, we hate to see disposable diapers go into waste and pile up in landfills,” Yang says. The new orchard at the Chesterfield complex was where they first tested their then-named Weed Control and Moisture Conservation Tree Mat. Later, it got a catchier name, TreeDiaper.
The testing was successfully completed in 2015, and the couple’s company, Zynnovation, manufactures TreeDiapers for commercial use. All the while, the couple has watched the former testing ground grow into an arboretum, and they’re delighted. ”It’s a great honor for Chesterfield,” Zhang says. “Lisa has really been a pioneer. And what’s she’s done has kind of been a secret up to now.”
But it’s no longer a secret at the complex. Word about the fruit has gotten around, and employees, visitors and wildlife pick at will. “The utility guys have to walk past the orchard to get to the vehicles,” Ferrel says. “They always get the fruit first.”
As she surveys the median, Ferrel points out that none of this costs the county a dime. “There’s no expense. Our trees have been donated, and the cost of looking after them isn’t separate from what we do, anyway, maintaining the complex.”
The shop received a $5,509.42 grant in 2015 from the Richmond Urban Tree Canopy Initiative, which allowed them to plant more trees: shagbark hickory, mockernut hickory, American plum, pawpaw and persimmon trees, as well as the Allegheny chinquapin, which is related to the chestnut.
Walking along Government Center Parkway, a main artery of the campus, Ferrel points out what she calls inherited trees. “We didn’t plant them, but we take care of them … crepe myrtles, Japanese zelkovas.” Right now, she says, “we’re responding to places that need trees around the complex.” The shop doesn’t use insecticides — it would harm pollinating bees — so they have to monitor things: Japanese beetles defoliated some trees last year.
“The upshot is that we’ve attracted a lot of bluebirds. We even have goldfinches now that situate near the administration building. It’s nice.”
It’s hard to grow trees in enclosed spaces that are surrounded by concrete and asphalt. One problem, Tuttle says, is tree decline.
“It happens in these kinds of settings,” he says. “The main culprit is soil compaction around the tree. It produces stress on the roots. A tree can be hurt by people parking near it, or working next to it. So we need to implement barriers around the tree, and institute fines if a contractor breaks the set rules.”
Ferrel points to a bald patch near a blossoming pear tree. “Grass and trees don’t always get along. We have places near trees where grass and plants just won’t grow because the tree root has just taken over their area. They emit poisons for protection. I mean ... that’s their home.”
“This is an office park,” Tuttle says. “Whatever we can do to help keep this place as green as possible should be the goal.”
In the meantime, the Lisax is thinking ahead.
“We want to do more as an arboretum,” she says, “My goal is to reach Level II. Colonial Williamsburg is a Level II. And that means more labeled tree species, a public education program, a collections policy and so on. But that is down the road.”
She smiles. “This is an ongoing project, and it’s going to grow and grow and grow.”
Accredited Virginia Arboretums
- Arlington National Cemetery Memorial Arboretum, Level III
- Blue Ridge School, St. George, Level I
- Chesterfield County Arboretum, Level I
- Colonial Williamsburg Arboretum, Level II
- Columbia Gardens Cemetery, Arlington, Level I
- Edith J. Carrier Arboretum at James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Level I
- Evergreen Burial Park and Arboretum, Roanoke, Level I
- Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Level I
- Rady Park Arboretum, Warrenton, Level I
