Planting trees seems to be like a signature in a way. It is a signature in time, throughout time, a signature that sprawls and expands. We plant trees to celebrate life, to commemorate life, to harness the fertility of new beginnings with the spade of hope, to shade out the old ground of yesterday on the scaffolding of today, in the buds of tomorrow. The trees we plant are in fact a temple of sorts in which resides the spirit that broke the ground.

On the 14th of September, 1835, after marrying his second wife Lydia (Lidian) Jackson, the Emersons moved into their house in Concord, Massachusetts. They would live the rest of their lives here in the house that was built by J.J. Coolidge in 1828. Originally known as Coolidge Castle, the estate “was renamed and deromanticized by the Emersons, who called it simply Bush,” (Richardson, 208).

In Robert D. Richardson Jr.’s biography Emerson: The Mind On Fire, he illustrates that immediately after moving in at Bush, the Emersons waste no time in planting throughout the grounds. “There were few trees in town or around houses. One could see to the horizon from almost anywhere in Concord. When the Emersons moved in, they set to work at once to plant trees. There was already a row of nine horse chestnut trees out front along the road, and they planted four elms and two balsam firs in an oval east of the house,” (Richardson, 209).

This immediate arboricultural installation comes as no coincidence from one of the great purveyors of Transcendentalism. But what is it exactly that we can see in Emerson’s early plantings on his property? Perhaps it is not just the man himself busy in the yard, but in fact him living out in the world his own ideals, his own process of creating a tangible thing driven innately by the spirit, illuminated by that Inner Light in which he adopted from the Quakers. His tree plantings are like his writing. We see Emerson the person behind the process, which was an observation of critical importance to Emerson’s own intellect in action. “Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do…build, therefore your own world,” (Richardson, 234). In planting four elms and two balsam firs, we see Emerson building his new world, his own world. The artist comes alive digging in his yard.

And later on, with the birth of his son Waldo, we see another installation in which, “Emerson went scrambling in the woods with a neighbor, Peter Howe, bringing back ‘six hemlock trees to plant in my yard which may grow while my boy is sleeping,'” (Richardson, 256). To commemorate this new life of his baby boy, six Tsugas in the yard! How many times I couldn’t count of the trees I have worked on that have marked a new life. It is an old tradition, and one which most likely did not start with Emerson. But from Emerson’s own intellectual ideals we can gain more insight into the aesthetic of beauty found in nature that transpire in his plantings. Richardson writes, “of much more interest to Emerson is the way in which nature furnishes us with our ideas and standards of beauty, whether of physical beauty, moral beauty (virtue), or intellectual beauty (truth): ‘The standard of beauty is the entire circuit of natural forms-the totality of nature,'” (230). In the act of planting these trees to celebrate the moment, we see Emerson bonding his personal life in that higher totality of nature, from which that entire aesthetic of beauty explodes outward with growth into the bright promise of the future. He is, no doubt, furnishing his life with nature in a deliberate and toilsome way.

Metaphorically growing out of Emerson’s tree planting is his artistic and intellectual credo that becomes such a driving force in his art, the importance of the intellectual or artistic process; not so much the work itself but the sweat on the page. Richardson writes that, “He planted shade trees and ornamentals. Most of all, he loved fruit trees. He planted apples and pears of many varieties, keeping a book to record their progress…But he never had much luck growing things. One visitor recalled that if Emerson planted corn it was sure to come up tulips. A committee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society made a special trip to the Emerson place to investigate how Emerson managed to get such poor fruit from such excellent stock,” (Richardson, 315). There it is, simply love in this process of breaking ground. What will grow here? For however the final product turns out, Emerson is finding himself in nature not as an end, but as a means. Of course, this is no excuse for poor planting or cultural practices, credibal arborists should make no mistake about that. But it is an excuse to possibly rectify a fruitless tree with a not so fruitless endeavor. Annie Dillard wrote that “I never saw a tree that was no tree in particular.” Maybe Emerson shared a similar sentiment.

Emerson’s trees shed some light onto the celebration of planting for life, for love, for new beginnings and lasting memories. Because of the transcendentalist’s coveted spirit of nature, as well as the dogma of process substantiating the character and ultimate value of a specific work, planting trees does seem a very Emersonian thing to do. The yeoman thing to do. Because it is a seed that starts in both the heart and in the mind, but doesn’t end with the mulch; it grows higher and deeper into the future. It roots us with the past. It makes us stronger for the future. The young tree becomes a part of the world, and the world a part of the tree. Then the planter is a sort of voice whispering from both. Planting trees simply reassures us of what we are capable of ourselves.