A tree that was donated to the Sedona Red Rock High School 17 years ago was transported to the neighboring Sedona Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Nov. 26, after several tree-hugging students sought to save it.
The ponytail palm tree [Beaucarnea recurvata], native to eastern Mexico, is a common houseplant and worked as a beloved school plant at the SRRHS library for nearly two decades. However, when the palm reached around 14 feet in April, students started commenting to the librarian that it had outgrown its location.
“They were all saying, ‘Mrs. Vail, that’s going to break the skylight,’” said Elaine Vail, who worked as an SRRHS librarian and teacher since the school’s founding in 1994, before retiring in June.
Vail said the tree was originally donated to the school as a prom decoration in the early 2000s by Biddle’s Nursery, formerly off of State Route 89A at Soldier Pass Road.
“After the prom we moved that tree to the library, and then from there it’s been nurtured over the years and it’s grown out of two pots,” Vail said. “It sure liked being under that skylight.”
But like the students, Vail also couldn’t help noticing that the tree “was about ready to bust out” through the skylight and into the sky, not to mention its third pot was cracking.
One lunch break in April, Vail just happened to tell Francisco Bekele and several other students about the dilemma and suggested that the tree could possibly be moved to the SPAC.
“Before I could even check [with the SPAC], those boys moved in with a dolly,” she said. “Next thing I know, I’m teaching a class and they are moving the tree out of the library. It was so awesome — I didn’t even ask them to. I wasn’t even prepared for them really.”
The boys wheeled the tree up the hill to the SPAC, and through the course of a few lunch breaks, dug a hole by the SPAC’s back entrance large enough for the tree to stand in.
“Over the course of the rest of the school year, the students would take pails of water from the art room down to the tree to water the tree,” Vail said.
While the tree thrived in its new outdoor location through the end of spring, summer and the beginning of fall, Vail knew it wouldn’t make it as temperatures dropped and winter loomed.
“I called every landscaping company I could find in the Verde Valley and nobody had a pot large enough and they really didn’t have any idea of how to go about it,” Vail said. “Then somebody recommended that I call Joe’s business, so I did.”
Joe Villegas of Sedona’s Villegas Landscaping answered the phone.
“He was my last hope, and so I told him the story,” Vail recalled. “I said we started collecting money to get a big pot. [We had collected] $400 that was donated by people from the community, teachers and students. He said, ‘Elaine, I’ll help you with that.’”
A Sedona native, Villegas attended Mingus Union High School, where he took his first horticulture classes, growing an interest in the field, which then bloomed into his career.
“I was moved that those kids were making a great effort to save the tree,” Villegas said of why he decided to volunteer his company to help out. “For me it was really about it not going to a lost cause. The kids were making an effort.
[The tree has] been in their world and their school for all of the years they were going through school, right? And so they cared about it, and they had an interest to save it.”
Villegas took matters into his own garden-gloved hands, stopping at Phoenix nurseries during business trips and sending photos of possible pots to school staff. The perfect pot was finally found at The Green Goddess nursery, which donated a giant pot and saucer, estimated at around $600. The remaining donation money raised by the community was used for shipping costs, mulch and other supplies.
On the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 26, Villegas and his crew, Vail and the boys that helped nurture the tree showed up at the SPAC to help unroot the tree, then transport it inside into its new pot in a corner display area with plenty of sunlight.
“As [the project] came to completion, I let the group of kids know that we were here today because of their efforts and their wanting to save the tree,” Villegas said. “I wanted them to know that others can be inspired by a cause that they took an interest in.”
Vail is relieved that the SPAC’s high ceilings offer the palm plenty of room to continue growing [though the ponytail palm usually caps out at 15 feet, 6 inches].
“It’s been 20 years of kids going in and out of the library and it just made the library feel a little more homey for the kids,” she said. “The community came together with kids and businesses and administration and made that work to save that tree.”
Alexandra Wittenberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext 126 or at awittenberg@larsonnewspapers.com
