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Committees: Shade Tree Committee

The mission of the Shade Tree Committee is to restore the traditional character of Hingham's public streetscapes through thoughtful and appropriate landscape design.

The Selectmen appointed the committee on November 16, 2010.

2011 Annual Report

The Hingham Shade Tree Committee, established by the Board of Selectmen in December, 2010, has produced some rather noticeable results during the past year. In line with its mission to implement professional landscape design principles on the Town’s public lands, it has delivered the re-landscaping of Jackass Park for the enjoyment of all.
Most interestingly, this was accomplished without cost to the taxpayers. Through the generosity of the Garden Club of Hingham, whose gift of $27,000 paid for the professional design, plants and trees, water supply (3 faucets) and planting materials, this became possible. The Department of Public Works also made a huge contribution of time for both the planning and installation of the project, and will continue to care for the park along with volunteers.

The first year’s project, chosen by the Committee and Selectmen, was to apply professional landscape design to Main Street between Queen Anne’s Corner and Cold Corner. This included not only the redesign of Jackass Park, but also replacement of the many small ornamental trees along Main Street that were not shade trees. The planning for this part of the project has been done but implementation is not yet completed, which it is hoped will happen in the spring and fall of this year.

A master list of shade trees has been compiled by a professional Landscape Architect in conjunction with the Shade Tree Committee, which the DPW has agreed to use throughout Hingham. Using this list permanently, it will be possible to replace, over time, dead or unsuitable trees with other tree species to provide welcoming shade. For this reason, the Shade Tree Committee refers to this work as “The Hundred Year Plan”.

The Shade Tree Committee meets frequently during the planting season, and has begun defining its goals for the year. Those will likely include finishing the undone work on Main Street that it had planned: redesign and re-landscaping of certain traffic islands along Main Street as well as completion of the replacement of the small ornamentals mentioned above. But it will also be looking at other high-visibility areas of town in need of professional landscape design and re-landscaping, such as areas of the waterfront.

Shirley Rydell, Chair
Jay Ippolito
Carol Pyles
A. Jordan Smith