New Anderson County Garden a Place of Hope, Peace
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
“When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.” – Mary Oliver
When the late-morning sun lands, generous and gold, on the grounds of the Anderson Civic Center, the air, touched by late October autumn, suggests something quietly radical: a public act of hope. A new stand of trees—27, to be precise—has taken root, not as a mere landscaping afterthought, but as a leafy emblem of communal longing. This is no statistically mandated reforestation, nor a page from some master-planned urban greening initiative. Rather, it is the offspring of the Hope Tree Project, a collaboration between the Anderson County Library, TreesUpstate, county officials, and those most reliable of grass-roots volunteers, the local citizens.
It began with the gestures of hands and ribbons: library patrons, coaxed into confiding their dreams (modest or grand, whispered or bold), set down their aspirations on wide coils of fabric and fastened them to a solitary maple at the downtown branch. Every batch of twenty wishes warranted a new sapling, its roots tucked into the Anderson earth, ribbons folded amongst the mulch as if feeding these ambitions straight to the heartwood.
“This project is rooted in something simple yet powerful: hope,” said Annie Sutton, the library’s director, overseeing the planting with the gracious gravity of someone who knows that libraries, much like groves, cultivate more than just what can be checked out or shelved. “Each fabric tie, handwritten with a wish, a dream, or a prayer, shows the heart and hope of our community.”
Saturday’s planting, knuckle-blistered but ceremonious, introduced the orchard’s beginnings near the pavilion by the recycling center—a pragmatic epicenter for so idealistic an endeavor. The trees themselves—oak, beech, willow, and an optimistic sampling of fruit varietals—promise, in their inevitable sprawl, shade and sustenance, both literal and philosophical. Sutton, ever the optimist, invoked the future: “Together, I believe we can grow something beautiful, not just for today, but for many generations to come.”
Hope, it turns out, is a perennial. The garden of wishes will spread, saplings multiplying with each new crop of ribbon-bound ambitions. There will be—if all goes as planned—more for memory, more for beauty.
“As it grows, this will be an even more beautiful place for peace and reflection,” said Anderson County Administrator Rusty Burns
The partnership, he noted, has already produced more than trees; it has cultivated the rarest of local fruits: collective aspiration and quiet, growing gladness.
