When Libby Atkins of Port Townsend learned that demolition was among possible fates for the structure that had housed the Landfall Restaurant at Point Hudson, she wasn’t concerned about the building.
She was worried that the weeping Atlas cedar, whose draping branches covered 18 feet of wooden fence outside, would disappear with it.
Now Atkins won’t have to mourn its loss.
On Thursday, Atkins held the tree’s branches as Port of Port Townsend maintenance workers, Port Townsend Garden Club members, local landscapers and residents came together to move the cedar to its new home next to Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden State Park.
“I was horrified when her sister tree was removed, when the sidewalk was put in on the east side of the maritime center,” Atkins said. “We lost her, but we wanted to save this one.”
That tree, also a weeping Atlas cedar, was a victim of construction, something Atkins didn’t want to happen if the restaurant was torn down.
No decision on the structure has been made yet. The Port of Port Townsend will conduct a public meeting on the issue at 6:30 p.m. today.
The meeting, at the former Landfall Restaurant building at Point Hudson, will include a tour of the building and discussion of issues regarding its possible renovation and use.
Cedar’s new location
Meanwhile, the cedar has a new home.
At its new location, the tree will serve as a reminder of the soldiers and sailors who ate breakfast at the Landfall during the tree’s tenure at Point Hudson at the end of Water Street, where a Coast Guard station once stood. Now, the Wooden Boat Foundation and the Northwest Maritime Center are at Point Hudson.
Atkins and Martha Trolin also see the weeping cedar tree as a memorial to Joe Wheeler, the founding director of Centrum for whom the small concert hall, once the fort’s movie theater, is named.
“We knew Joe — he was so friendly to us when we moved here,” Trolin said. “It’s nice to have it at Wheeler Theater. We will see it and think about him.”
It was Atkins who mobilized the community effort by sending out an e-mail, asking who would be willing to help move the tree.
Garden club
The e-mail was answered by Susan Ambrosius, Arbor Day chairman of the Port Townsend Garden Club, who was enthusiastic about saving the cedar because of its history.
“Think of how many vets came off the boat and went to the Legion Hall for a beer and came over here for bacon and eggs,” Ambrosius said.
Ambrosius alerted the garden club, which took up the cause as one of their Arbor Day projects. She also contacted landscaper Karen Page, who brought tools and supervised the move.
While the cedar extends 18 feet horizontally, it does not have a tap root, Ambrosius said.
“The important thing is the hair roots on top,” Page said. “A few stabilizing roots had to come off, but this is a great root ball. What will matter is how it’s taken care of in its first year or two.”
Port helped
Atkins also got a response from Port of Port Townsend Executive Director Larry Crockett, who called to say, “I heard from a little bird that you want to move the tree.”
“He said, ‘We’ll do anything we can do to help you,'” Atkins said. “His support, with Karen and Susan and the can-do energy of the garden club, made it possible.”
The port dispatched a backhoe and maintenance crew of Shawn Wiles, Travis Keena and Laura Snodgrass. Larry Aase, maintenance crew leader, also came down to help.
Starting at 11 a.m., Wiles used the backhoe to remove other vegetation and soil around the cedar. Then Atkins and the other volunteers helped separate the branches from the fences and supported them while the trunk was wrapped in Styrofoam to protect it.
“It’s like a conga line,” one branch-holder said.
Using a chain and the backhoe, Wiles lifted the root ball and trunk out of the ground and placed it on a flatbed truck.
By noon, the cedar, a row of volunteers holding it in place on supports on the bed of the truck, was rolling out of Point Hudson and on its way to Fort Worden State Park, where everyone arrived safely but cold.
“It was a good workout for the calves,” said Bonnie Whyte, one of the riders, of holding on as the truck drove up Monroe and Jackson streets to the top of Morgan Hill, then around the curve and down to the fort.
Once at the fort, the volunteers dug holes to put up supports for the cedar, which was planted between the theater and the Rhododendron Garden. Page volunteered her time to landscape the area around the cedar as well as help with the move.
“We’re bringing in eight yards of soil to create a berm and will do some under-planting — golden grasses and golden ilex — that will offset the cedar,” Page said.
The weeping cedar is a hybrid of the Atlas cedar, she said, one of three true cedars, the others being Lebanon and deodara.
While not a native tree, which the garden club usually plants, the cedar is close, Ambrosius said, and should do well once it gets established.
Unlike the Arbor Day planting the club does at the state park in the spring, relocating the tree at the correct time of year will help, according to Barbara Hill, past president of the club.
“It’s a great outcome and great effort with so many people helping,” said Trolin, who remembers admiring the tree while eating at the Landfall Restaurant.
“Now we need to do some praying that it makes it through the winter.”
“I sat and drank many a cup of tea looking at that tree.”
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
