PLAINFIELD – A huge crabapple tree in a Hudson Avenue yard stopped debris from hitting nearby houses and ended up with close to two feet of muddy silt around it after flooding July 11, 2024. This year it has its “best bloom ever,” said Lauren Geiger.
photo by Lauren Geiger
Geiger said the tree is in the yard of a neighbor’s rental property, but is in her view, so she’s adopted it and employed Montpelier’s Tree Works to give it the attention it’s needed.
Bill DeVos, the former Tree Works owner, and still an employee, said it’s among the biggest and oldest crabapple trees he’s ever seen. In recent years the company has pruned it, added cabling to hold the several stems together and fertilized it.
Flooding in 2023 reached the tree, but it wasn’t as bad as in 2024, said Geiger. Last year, it’s estimated that roughly 1,000 trees washed down the Great Brook. Many of them lodged against the Mill Street bridge in Plainfield, backing up water that created a lake, flooding the Hudson Avenue area.
There was so much mud and silt from the flood, Geiger said it took a team of 100 volunteers two and a half weeks to dig out the basement of her house. All of her gardens that had been replaced after the 2023 flooding, and a new stone wall built then, were gone after the 2024 flooding.
It wasn’t clear then that the crabapple tree would survive. Geiger consulted with DeVos who instructed her to remove the mud and silt covering the root system, which was done with a backhoe. Leaving it would have prevented air from reaching the tree’s roots. Tree Works then applied fertilizer. Arborist Geoff Hurley has also pruned the tree, said Geiger.
photo by Lauren Geiger.
This spring, with none of her gardens to admire, Geiger said she’s glad to have the crabapple tree to brighten her view.
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
