One of the great public views on the Vineyard at the Tashmoo Overlook is disappearing behind a wall of willows, but instead of calling in tree surgeons to open the vista up, the trees’ owners have called in their lawyers.
The Tisbury selectmen complained on Tuesday night that despite more than a year of attempts to negotiate a solution, the owners of the trees, the Thomas and Ginny Payette family of Tashmoo Farm, remained intransigent and have now refused to talk further, except through their legal representative.
After thirty years serving the Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich on Cape Cod, horticulturist Jeanne Gillis said she still loves to work with people and plants.
Speaking before the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club at its October meeting, Ms. Gillis presented more than thirty colorful slides in a talk titled Flowering Plants for the Landscape.
Many of the plants featured in her talk are strong and able to survive high winds.
The latest round in a dispute pitting a landowner’s right of access against conservation values played out like a game of cat and mouse in town hall, the courts and the woods of Edgartown last week.
It began a little before 10 a.m. on Friday morning, when Paul Elliott, the president of the Edgartown Meadows Road Association, found workmen cutting down trees along Middle Line Road.
O, Christmas Tree! Park Landlord Says It Must Come Down
By MANDY LOCKE
A graceful Christmas tree is caught in a tug-of-war between Edgartown leaders and the Benjamin Hall family.
The full-bodied spruce stands 20 feet tall in the center of a treasured park on Main street. The Halls - who have leased the so-called mini-park to the town for decades - are demanding the tree come down.
From the sky down, goodbye to a grand old friend.
An insect species never before recorded on Martha's Vineyard has attacked spruce trees Islandwide, damaging many and even killing a few, say area scientists and tree experts.
The pest was identified this month as a Spruce aphid (elatobium abietinum) by a cooperative effort of scientists at the University of Massachusetts.