Growing Together: Doherty Oaks Take Root on the Hillsdale Campus

A few weekends ago, Seven Hills parents, students, teachers, and friends gathered on the Hillsdale Campus for Growing Together, an event in which we planted 150 oak saplings that had been propagated from acorns gathered on the Doherty Campus. 

With this project, we’re creating a symbolic and ecological connection between the two campuses.

Growing Together was a day of working hard and playing hard. Whether shoveling soil, toting trees, or running games and activities for the youngest students, our volunteers did a great job and had a great time.  

By the end of the day, we had planted all of the oaklings in our makeshift “tree farm,” a repurposed garden next to the Leyman Science Center and the Meckel building. The oaklings will thrive in this sheltered space, which is out of the way of construction, safe from deer, and easy to access in order to check on their progress.  

Our timing was good: we got the trees into the ground about a week before the first frost and the first snowfall. 

In two years, when the new Doherty Lotspeich Lower School building is complete and the last of the trucks and backhoes have left campus, we’ll move our Doherty oaks a final time. They’ll go from our tree farm to permanent homes around the new Lower School and in other areas of the campus.

Speaking of which, I had the opportunity that morning to lead several tours of the site of the new Lower School. I was glad to be able to share with members of the community our plans for the building and for the Early Childhood and Lower School “campus within a campus.” 

The new Lower School will be set against a grove of oaks that are already hundreds of years old. Oaks are slow growing and long lived, an anchor species that creates ecosystems in which many other species can thrive.  

It is humbling to stand under those trees and to think of how much history they have seen.  Perhaps it is even more humbling to realize that those little oaks we planted a few Saturdays ago are less for ourselves than they are for future generations that will walk and grow and play under their shade. 

Perhaps it is even more humbling to realize that those little oaks we planted a few Saturdays ago are less for ourselves than they are for future generations that will walk and grow and play under their shade. 

I am grateful to the many people who made this event a success. First of all, a huge thanks to Dr. Bryce Carlson of the Upper School science department. Last year, Bryce was walking with his son on the Doherty Campus, and the two of them gathered some bucketfuls of fallen acorns. Bryce began to propagate these acorns, nurturing them as they sprouted and became trees. He put countless hours into raising the oaks and preparing them to eventually thrive on their own. Thank you, too, to Assistant Head of School Laura Leonard and Director of Communications Auriel Buchanan who conceptualized and planned this event.  

I’m deeply grateful to Doherty parent Peter Lovaas, who brought to our team his deep knowledge of oak trees and his love of Seven Hills. Thank you to our partners at the Cincinnati Nature Center for their expertise and to the Upper School’s Student Sustainability Ambassadors for their leadership. And thank you, finally, to the dozens of teachers, parents, students, and friends who devoted a Saturday to this ecological unification of our campuses.