07-07-2025
Scrub Hub: Arboretum director protects the living 'creatures' at Crown Hill Cemetery
This is the second edition of our Scrub Hub with a new format. We are reaching out across Indiana to speak one-on-one with Hoosiers who have something to say about our natural environment and presenting those interviews in this new Q&A style. If you know anyone who should be featured, please let us know.
Bitternut hickories, swamp white oaks and American elms freckle the landscape inside the gates of Crown Hill Cemetery and Arboretum. So do some 133 other tree species — and Indiana's largest known specimen of hornbeam.
Carrie Tauscher, the arboretum's director, stands amidst it all, peering up into the canopy to look for damage. After recent storms, there is quite a bit to be found.
She's something of a Lorax around these parts. Her job is to plant, maintain and advocate for the 11,000 or so trees that grow alongside the buried coffins and mausoleums. Every day seems to bring a new adventure: in between tree care duties, she leads workshops, tours and weeding days for Girl Scouts, volunteers and home schoolers.
Tauscher has been the arboretum's director for over three years, and she showed us some of her favorite trees while answering a few questions about life in the cemetery for this edition of Scrub Hub. Her answers are edited for brevity and clarity.
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Storms. Absolutely, and constantly. I literally watched all those trees fail in the storm last night. I was out here planting, and I just watched them all go "plooph!" I just planted 30 trees today but that's not even enough canopy to replace one tree that we lost.
After every storm, I go back around and determine whether or not those trees get to stay or if they should go.
Not every tree failure is catastrophic or visible. Sometimes a tree has failed, but it stayed upright, and so we assess those trees as quickly as possible. Those are almost more dangerous. If someone sees a broken tree, they're like, 'Ooh, I'll avoid the broken tree.' But some trees could be cracked all the way down the middle from the roof plate to the top of the tree, but to the average cyclist or pedestrian walking in the cemetery using it for recreation, they're like, 'Oh, it's just a tree. It's fine.'
And then you get a gentle gust, and one half of that tree completely falls over.
Statistically, you would be struck by lightning three times before a tree would actually physically hurt you. But you should be cautious, right?
When I was very little we went out to the woods and we dug some tree seedlings. We each got to pick out our own. They were planted in our yard, and that was our grow-with-me tree. That was the tree that I watered, that was the tree I mulched, and that was the tree I helped mom and dad prune. It was my tree.
Even going to college after moving away from the farm for a while, I still checked on that tree. Consciously or not, that tree is still a part of my life. Trees are one of the few living things that can live as long or longer than you do, and you get to watch them grow and change, just like humans grow and change throughout their lifespan. And I think that is really beautiful.
This living landscape is a historic artifact. The entire site is designed, from where the roads are placed, where the trees are placed to how the sites are topographically set. Every one of these grave shafts has a concrete box under it, and in a way, this is as urban as a city street in New York.
But part of being a tree museum is to have the trees and the specimens for people to love and enjoy and learn from. That's why we have volunteer activities and field trips and homeschool day and all these cool things that are happening.
The more grave shafts that are filled, the less space there is to fit the trees in. We have to find a balance between our purpose as a cemetery and making sure there is space for trees so that we continue to have wonderful specimens and a beautiful landscape for people to visit.
A lot of people are stoked about pollinators. And a lot butterflies and moths rely on native tree species for the larval stage of their life cycle. Caterpillars eat native tree leaves, not the squishy, herbaceous plants. Luna moths need sweet gum and hickory, and question mark butterflies need hackberry trees. So, your pollinator garden should include trees!
IndyStar's environmental reporting project is made possible through the generous support of the nonprofit Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
