“This is the one.” Mary Scarlette steps off a walkway on Greensboro’s Bennett College quad and leans forward. She wants to get a better look at the inscription on a brick-size plaque at the base of an enormous magnolia. This tree named in honor of Ida Haslup Goode by Class of 1933. “My father planted this tree. For every tree, we always put a plaque.”

At 92 years old, Mary Scarlette is a local legend. She was a baby when her parents moved to Bennett College, a historically Black women’s college in downtown Greensboro. Her father was superintendent of the school’s building and grounds, her mother a dietitian.

Former dean Mary Scarlette remembers when willlow oaks like this one shaded the campus. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

“There was always a gung-hoism about the trees,” Scarlette says. “At the end of every senior day, when the students got their caps and gowns, they would go and put their tree in the ground.”

Scarlette was 4 years old in 1936 when a tornado barreled toward campus. “I remember it so clearly,” she says. “My mother had gone to see a movie at the Carolina Theatre. My father took me to Pfeiffer Hall for safety. Everybody was just heartbroken because those trees came down.”

Many were replaced. Over time, however, the magnolias and willow oaks lining Bennett’s shaded quad diminished. By 2024, photos of the campus grounds bore little resemblance to the lush landscape of Scarlette’s childhood.

• • •

The starkening of Bennett’s lawn is a microcosm of Greensboro, and of landscapes around the country. Like many of Greensboro’s neighborhoods, most of the campus trees were there when the buildings were built.

“A tree is the perfect measure of time,” says Greensboro landscape architect Randal Romie. “Unlike our children, who grow up really fast, we don’t see trees grow. If we’re the third or fourth generation experiencing a 150-year-old oak tree, then we get to see that tree reach maturity.”

We also get to see the end of its long life. In 2000, when another storm knocked down an entire block of pine trees behind Greensboro’s David Caldwell Historic Park, NeighborWoods was born.

Keith Francies (left) and Randal Romie have added thousands of trees to Greensboro’s canopy.  photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

Romie came up with a plan to plant 170 trees, plus a collection of native shrubs, like viburnum and beautyberries. Greensboro Beautiful — a local nonprofit that works with the city on beautification projects — called for volunteers to come plant the trees. “Two hundred people showed up. A family planted a tree for their grandmother. We planted a tree for the victims of 9/11,” he says. “In a couple of hours, we created a forest.”

Today, the NeighborWoods program continues to shade and beautify Greensboro — one neighborhood at a time. In the months leading up to the annual planting in the fall, homeowners can request grand native canopy trees, like white oaks, magnolias, and red maples, or understory trees, like dogwoods and serviceberries.

Romie and his fellow volunteer Keith Francies, a retired certified arborist, have volunteered with Greensboro Beautiful for more than 60 years combined, and have directed NeighborWoods since its inception. Each fall, they greet scout troops, local church groups, and college students who come to help neighbors plant their new trees. They give each volunteer a pair of gloves and a quick lesson.

To enjoy the fruits of their labor, Francies and Romie just look up. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

“Having community volunteers allows people to take ownership of the land in their city,” Romie says. “To feel like they’ve contributed to the beauty of it.”

Together, Romie and Francies have overseen the planting of more than 4,000 trees. In addition to restoring the canopy in old neighborhoods where trees have become diseased or are dying, they also plant trees in neighborhoods that never had them to begin with.

Romie, who as a child fell in love with the trees in a forest behind his house, has always been drawn to native landscapes. “We’re meant to live in harmony with nature, in the way that the tree takes in the carbon dioxide that we breath out and gives us oxygen to breathe in,” he says. “We are dependent on nature for our life breath.”

• • •

When NeighborWoods approached Bennett College about restoring the campus to the flourishing, green past that Mary Scarlette remembers, it happened to fall during the school’s sesquicentennial celebration. “We have a campus manual with photos and drawings from the turn of the century,” Romie says. “We started with a plan to plant 150 trees for their 150th anniversary, to put the campus landscaping back the way it was.” In the end, they planted 195 trees.

Last fall, NeighborWoods helped volunteers plant almost 200 trees on Bennett College’s campus to celebrate the school’s sesquicentennial. photograph by Stacey Van Berkel

Today, when Scarlette walks the campus, following in her own footsteps as a child, student, teacher, and then dean, the new trees bring back memories and give her hope for the future. “Every tree has a purpose, just like the students who come as freshwomen and leave prepared to take their place in the world,” she says. “When you plant a tree, it grows, it matures. It becomes.”

For more information about NeighborWoods, visit greensborobeautiful.org/tree-plantings/neighborwoods.