On a cold Nov 4. afternoon, students, faculty and staff gathered to plant the Class of 2028 tree, an annual tradition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“This is, by far and wide, my favorite part of my job to plant trees, and especially a tree like this that commemorates the incoming class and students. It’s just the best,” Todd Cournoyer, head of grounds, said.

The Class of 2028 tree is a sweetgum rotundiloba, chosen because of its unique rounded leaves and vibrant colors. The sweetgum tree will be a vibrant green in the spring and summer and a deep orange in the fall.

A couple of freshman students watched on, as students from Professor Michael Davidsohn’s landscaping class removed the burlap and wire from the root of the tree.

Due to the dryness of the dirt, volunteers and staff had to water the hole significantly before more dirt could be added. This was due to the lack of rain and also the time of year. The class trees used to be planted in the spring of the classes’ graduation, but last year, the change was made to plant the trees in the fall of the classes first year.

“We have to consider when the tree is dormant,” Pam Monn, associate director of grounds said. “We don’t want to move it from the nursery to here when it’s trying to store energy for the winter.”

After the tree was watered, students and onlookers were encouraged to help shovel dirt into the hole. Several freshmen participated as well as Chancellor Javier Reyes. Reyes attended last year’s planting and was excited to return this year. He said the annual tree planting is “something that speaks about how we renew ourselves at [UMass] every year.”

Shared excitement echoed through those who attended, including Cournoyer who said that “we get jazzed to do this.”

Lena Sakharuk, a freshman computer science major, stopped by the tree planting. “I’m really excited to be able to watch it grow as I also grow,” Sakharuk said. “And I’ve never really had something physical to kind of look at and remind me of, ‘oh, time is going onwards.’”

“Every time you plant a tree like this with a new generation, you just never know what that generation will do, right?” Reyes said. “So every year, I think everybody should have that kind of moment where they see something that will be here for years to come, that it’s theirs.”

Many class trees have survived decades, including the class tree of 1890 which sits in front of South College. Cournoyer described the now massive tree as a “living monument.”

“UMass is many things to many people for sure, and one of the things that folks might not know about it is that it’s an arboretum. It’s a botanical collection of trees from around the world,” Cournoyer said. He also stated before the event that, “Today we’re going to increase the campus catalog and the diversity of trees on campus by one.”

The Frank A. Waugh Arboretum is “a campus-wide collection of trees,” maintaining and caring for over 8,000 specimens of trees and shrubs. The arboretum committee chooses the class tree based off a list of trees not yet on campus.

“Imagine when the students graduate four years from now, they see how much [the tree] grew, and then they [come] back 10 years later, 20 years later, and they may have now their kids coming to UMass, and they can come take a picture with this tree,” Reyes said.

“This is cool to look back on, take a picture today and then take a picture every year and be like, ‘oh this is me and the tree,’” Sakharuk said.

Alexandra Hill can be reached at [email protected].