The Brenton Arboretum: A Personal Story

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location along the Mississippi River. It was a wonderful place to both work and live. While there, I had formed a habit of going out along the great Mississippi River to tromp and look around with my regal Labrador dog, Chaser, and any of the kids who would come along. This was a Sunday afternoon activity. Sue also came along occasionally. Now I found myself in Des Moines without much to do on weekends. Often Sue and I did take our children to our Dallas County farm on Sunday and walk back in the woods and sloughs on the before mentioned Ingersoll Farm, but somehow I wanted to be out more. Many of us can look back at our lives and identify a significant moment that points us, often unwittingly, in a new direction. That was the case when my sister, Jane Eddy, now deceased, gave me a marvelous tree identification book, The Book of Trees, by William Grimm. It included very skillful and precise drawings of leaves, twigs, fruit, and flowers related to nearly every commonly known Eastern North American tree. The book had a wonderful key that outlined various tree characteristics, and helped me begin the process of identifying all that was around me both in summer and winter. This was exciting. I really started to differentiate between the species and for the first time began noticing their manifold characteristics and differences that separated one tree from another: the bark, the twig, the leaf, the structure, the size. It was fascinating. I was learning the common names of the native trees. I gained confidence. I wanted to know more. I took a semester course at Drake University focused on woody plant identification. As I proceeded to learn more about each 12
species, they became acquaintances, friends. There they were, and I was often with them. Always silent but so alive! They were both majestic and modest, but sometimes exuberant, always attached to place. I admired their character, their permanency. One day, walking through the countryside with The Book of Trees, I began to notice all of the bottles and cans that littered the land. It bothered me. Soon after, I came across a Boston Federal Reserve analysis of a recent bottle bill 4 passed by the Massachusetts legislature. Contrary to what bottlers and grocery store owners were saying, the report indicated that giving people an incentive to recycle their bottles and cans was actually a boon for the economy and the environment. At about this time, the state of Iowa was starting an initiative called Iowa 2000 5 . Governor Robert D. Ray and University of Iowa President Willard “Sandy” Boyd led the initiative to look at the future of Iowa's economics, resources, and society. The governor asked me to get involved. The more I thought about the bottle bill, the more I was convinced this was something that could make a difference in Iowa. I took the idea to the governor and told him that, in my opinion, if he wanted to do something significant under Iowa 2000, he should consider getting rid of the litter from bottles and cans. I handed him the study by the Federal Reserve and told him he might find it interesting. I was pleasantly surprised when he included the bottle bill as part of his legislative agenda and made it a priority to get it passed into law. This was an exciting thing to be part of. And through this process, I was learning there were others like me who cared deeply about the land. People in the Sierra Club, my first environmental organization, taught me the ecological importance of trees and forests. I learned from their publications and also those of the National Arbor Day Foundation and the Audubon Society. This was a whole new world to me. It all fit so well together: soil, moisture, air, woody plants, all connected and influencing one another, and needing one another for healthy existence. My appetite to learn more continued to build. Here I was, a banker by day but taking a course in cellular biology at Des Moines Area Community College. The class helped me understand the processes of photosynthesis and respiration. This knowledge and these feelings about trees slowly grew. I was now doing a lot of reading about the natural world and environmentalism and became concerned for the health of our planet. Walking, looking, and identifying strengthened all of this early knowledge and these early feelings. I wanted to do something, but what? It was the early 1990s. I told my brothers, Bill and Bob, that I wanted to retire from the day-to-day business of banking in order to devote more of my time to other matters. I was 58 years old and my energy was abundant. Things were starting to come together in my mind. I had read earlier about a man in Missouri who bought woodlands, lots of woodlands, just in order to preserve them. This affected me, but as I thought about it, I realized that his scope was beyond my resources. However, I began to think that I could buy some land somewhere. I started to 13
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Page 7 and 8: View to the west from the cottonwoo
Page 9 and 10: I feel a need to briefly describe t
Page 11: I should make one thing clear befor
Page 15 and 16: Aerial and satellite photos of Bren
Page 17 and 18: After becoming quite familiar with
Page 19 and 20: I told them about my idea of taking
Page 21 and 22: idea of individual clusters of simi
Page 23 and 24: farm west of the city. While not di
Page 25 and 26: Thanks to the Bickelhaupts and many
Page 27 and 28: een his world at the Morton Arboret
Page 29 and 30: I had one piece of the puzzle in pl
Page 31 and 32: The chief purpose of the arboretum
Page 33 and 34: a small water pump. The tank and pu
Page 35 and 36: Spring was in bloom, but there was
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Page 39 and 40: Planting day was near. Now I needed
Page 41 and 42: We built a road through the arboret
Page 43 and 44: three of us decided to use the smal
Page 45 and 46: The year began with a bang. We were
Page 47 and 48: On July 28, 1998, The Brenton Arbor
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Page 53 and 54: In August, we printed our first gen
Page 55 and 56: Late in 2000, Crow Construction Com
Page 57 and 58: It would have been disappointing to
Page 59 and 60: We formally dedicated the arboretum
Page 61 and 62: Riordan as our lead, we reached out
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As noted earlier, we knew the very
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The next four years would lead the
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helped. But how much should we be c
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By the end of 2006, the arboretum w
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When I started this history, I thou
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Our special collections were becomi
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The Vista Room offers sweeping view
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1995 Winter: Buz first considers th
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I want to thank my dear friend Meli
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