“We’re always planting trees on campus. The campus is really growing and when that happens?EUR??,,????'??? you have your normal decline of the urban forest,” said Koby Weatherford, the urban forester for landscape maintenance at Texas A&M. “Old trees are on the way out, breaking down and becoming safety hazards. At that point we like to remove them. Normally we do it in-house, but since there were so many [trees], the actual planting of them was done by a contractor.”

Students passing by Simpson Drill Field will notice that not all of the trees bordering the grassy field are new. This is because the new trees are replacing those of the original 55 that died.

“There are some bigger trees around Simpson that are more mature,” Weatherford said. “Those are part of the original 55 trees that were planted for the people that died in World War I and I think that was back in the 1920s. Over time, some of those declined and they opted to remove several of them.”

The University studied the causes of the trees’ demise, and concluded that poor drainage caused the live oaks to get sick during rainy seasons when they soaked in stagnant undrained water. To help the trees grow, the University raised the soil by approximately one foot in the area the tree would be planted. Weatherford said this would help keep the trees’ roots out of the water as they grew strong enough to survive.

The memorial to veterans of World War I on Simpson Drill Field extends beyond the trees, though. “There are two monuments out there,” Weatherford said. “There’s a large one on the northwest corner that lists all the names of the people that died in the war, and there’s a smaller one located along Houston Street.”

The 25 trees that were planted border the drill field and will offer shade and solitude for those who spend their time on Simpson.

Live oaks were the choice of tree for more reasons than shade.

“The original [memorial trees] that went in were live oaks, so we were staying with that theme,” Weatherford said. “Live oaks are pretty much the hardiest tree for this area. They are not necessarily native to this area; but they can handle the urban environment much better than the native oaks”