Contacts:
Anne Donovan Communications Director 781-784-0567, x7524 adonovan@ttor.org	Peter Pinciaro General Manager, The Crane Estate 978-356-4351, x4030 pjpinciaro@ttor.org

Ipswich, Massachusetts - On Friday, April 28, working like crazy in a spray of sawdust, a team of volunteers from the Massachusetts Arborists Association (MAA) spent the day cutting, pruning, and replanting the landscape on Castle Hill at the Crane Estate to help restore its original grandeur.
 
The tree work – done by almost 300 professional arborists through the MAA's annual Arbor Day volunteer effort – was worth almost $400,000 to The Trustees of Reservations, who own and operate the property. 

First cut—In just one day, 300 volunteers from the Massachusetts Arborists Association make real headway in restoring the grounds of Castle Hill.  Photos: Katie McMahon.

Castle Hill, a National Historic Landmark, includes 165 acres of natural and designed landscapes.  The MAA's efforts are the first step in recapturing the vision of the Crane family, who purchased the property in 1910 and hired the century's most notable architects and landscape architects to transform this place into a quintessential summer estate.

Noted landscape architects and historians Lucinda Brockway and Nina Brown devoted substantial volunteer hours to developing the landscape plan, at the direction of Augusta Stanislaw, Co-Chair of the Crane Estate Committee, who led the charge to bring back the glory days of the Great House on Castle Hill.

“Guided by the original Olmsted plans developed for the Cranes, by letters and documents from the era, and by photographs of the grounds in their prime, our goal is to rejuvenate and restore the essence of the 1920s landscape and many of its key features, which have disappeared with time,” said Stanislaw. “Arbor Day has offered us a tremendous opportunity to make major advances in this process. It was an exciting and highly productive day. We are deeply grateful to the MAA for their outstanding work at Castle Hill.”

Before and after—An overgrown and obstructed view (left) is transformed into the sweeping view-to-the-sea envisioned by some of the best landscape architects of the 20th century (right).  Photos: Katie McMahon.

This is the third year that The Trustees welcomed the Arborists' on their annual Arbor Day Celebration.  Last year, the MAA worked at World's End in Hingham and in 2004 it was Appleton Farms in Ipswich and Hamilton. 

The MAA, one of the oldest trade associations in the country, has more than 850 of the state's leading arborists as members.  Competition for the annual Arbor Day workfest is tremendous.  In theory, any tree-rich public or nonprofit site could qualify, but in practice, according to Dan Mayer, MAA Vice President and head of Mayer Tree Service in Essex, “A site has to lend itself to the amount of equipment we bring: cranes, tree spades, chippers, stump grinders, log trucks.  It's a lot.”

“The Arborists are a great group and we're thankful for their hard work,” said Andy Kendall, President of The Trustees.  “They've done a lot to help us to restore Castle Hill to its 1920s heyday, recapturing some of the vistas that make this place remarkable.”