The saga of the 100-year-old sago palm
A lucky sago palm finds a new home at the Healdsburg Museum
If trees could talk — and really… who’s to say they can’t? — this sago palm tree has a bunch of folks to thank.
Let’s start with Healdsburg residents Kim Fiori and Robin See. The couple recently sold their rental house, a tear-down on Grant Street. Fearing the new owners might also raze the 100-year-old palm, they sought a new home for it.
“I wanted to give it another chance,” says See, “so it can live an even longer, happy life.”
Their first thought was to donate it to the new Healdsburg Animal Shelter, but it didn’t fit in with their landscape plans. So they reached out to the Healdsburg Museum.
“We wanted to find a place in which everyone can enjoy it,” says Fiori, “so we asked them if they’d like a historic palm.”
Curator, Holly Hoods, was thrilled. “I loved the idea of saving something so old, and helping it thrive in the future. We really lucked out.”
“How could we turn it down?” says Loebel. “It’s as old as our museum. Maybe older.”
Of course, transplanting the tree was another story altogether. Such an undertaking requires many men, hours, and heavy machinery. In other words, it requires money.
Or if you’re lucky… a pair of charitable, local landscape designers like Jay Tripathi and Peter Estournes of Gardenworks, Inc.
Peter Estournes of Gardenworks guides the palm into its new home
Founded in 1977, the Healdsburg company has a long history of working pro bono for various local organizations and projects like the Little League, Boy Scouts, Youth Soccer and the local skate park, to name a few.
And on April 29th, Arbor Day, they generously rounded up their resources to save a tree.
“We live here,” says Tripathi. “And whenever possible, we love to do things like this for the community.”
Besides, they couldn’t let a beauty like this go to waste. Sago trees grow notoriously slow. And while an eight-foot tree might not normally stop people in their tracks, when you consider this one only grew about an inch per year, it puts things in perspective.
“This is the biggest one of these I’ve ever seen,” says Estournes. “It’s not a sago, it’s a specimen.”
A specimen that owes some measure of debt, and the next hundred or so years of its life, to a slew of very nice Healdsburgers.
If this centenarian could talk….
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Before I moved to Cloverdale almost 25 years ago, there was a beautiful Sago Palm in our backyard in Southern California that the previous owner had planted about 30 years earlier. They are beautiful plants – and to watch them during their short-lived bloom period is spectacular. Nice article.
Thanks Mary Jo! I chanced upon this story while skateboarding around town researching another story about historic homes. It’s fun when that happens. Btw, I’ve been really enjoying your Cloverage.
I wish I could have found some willing volunteers like these to save the +120 yr. old wisteria on the former Wright Nursery site (linked to Burbank) in Santa Rosa 2 decades ago. It was uprooted for a business park.