Thank you, Mrs. Sharpe - tree management in Providence, Rhode Island administered by Mary Elizabeth Sharpe and her daughter-in-law, Peggy - Urban Forests

American Forests, Jan-Feb, 1992 by Norah Deakin Davis

The cit of Providence is a model of progressive urban greening, thanks to this pair of tough-minded women.

By NORAH DEAKIN DAVIS

No one could say no to Mary Elizabeth Sharpe. Not even the mayor.

In the late 1970s, toward the end of her long life, Mrs. Henry D. Sharpese-If-made businesswoman, philanthropist, and wife of Brown University's chancellor-felt the need to sound off about the trees of her adopted city of Providence, Rhode Island. So she "invited" the mayor to the elegant French chateau where she lived for 54 years.

"She insisted I couldn't leave before I saw the flowers in her garden," recalls Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. with a grin.

Command appearances were Mrs. Sharpe's style. Back in the 1960s, she realized that a row of yews she'd planted in Providence was languishing from lack of water. So she did what any strong-willed, determined New England woman would do: She commandeered a tank truck from the city's fire department.

Today her daughter-in-law Peggy (Mrs. Henry D. Sharpe Jr.) carries on the family tradition. Mary Elizabeth Sharpe was a self-taught landscape architectPeggy Sharpe by pure hapenstance has a degree in landscape architecture form the Rhode Island School of Design.

Also like her mother in law, Peggy Sharpe-a longtime environmentalist-has proved to be a Lady Bountiful for Providence. She raised $500,000 from founddations and private individuals for planting trees and then lobbied the mayor until he agreed to earmark a $1 million bond issue for greening the city.

As a result of these two remarkable women, Providence today has one of the nation's most progressive tree programs. A portion of the bond issue paid for a computerized inventory of the city's street trees. "We know where every single tree is," says Mayor Cianci. The next step was a tree-management plan that puts Providence on the cutting edge of urban forestry since only 17 percent of the nation's cities have master plans for street trees.

What's more, Peggy Sharpe gathered a talented group that includes a college president, landscape architects, and community activists to serve as the Providence Street Tree Task Force. With Peggy acting as catalyst, the task force developed an innovative program in which free trees are given to qualifying neighborhoods. After only three years, the task force has a network of no fewer than 98 neighborhood tree-planting groups.

During its startup period the network planted 770 balled-and burlapped street trees 10 to 15 feet tall. The neighborhood groups are composed mostly of homeowners with a direct stake in the trees' welfare. As a result, the task force reports a low loss rate of only 4 percent.

The tale of Providence's first benefactress actually begins in Syracuse, New York, in 1897.

Sharpe family lore has it that gold fever gripped Mary Elizabeth's father, who left Syracuse for the Klondike and never returned. The deserted wife was distraught, and it fell to eldest daughter Mary Elizabeth-then only 12-to undertake the family's support.

In a silver-spoon version of the Horatio Alger story, this scion of a prominent family began making candy in her mother's kitchen and peddling it door to door. Before long, her candy company-Mary Elizabeth's was a household name in Syracuse. As the years passed, she wrote cookbooks and opened a chain of tearooms and candy shops that gained her company a national reputation.

Well into her 30s and never married she took time off for a horseback vacation in Wyoming. There she met Henry Sharpe, long-time chancellor of Brown University and head of Brown and Sharpe Mfg. Co.-a Providence firm that began making machine tools in 1833 and employed 11,000 workers at its peak. Henry Sharpe's dual career and civic-minded activities had kept him an eligible bachelor. The career woman had found romance.

She and Henry Sharpe-then 50-were married. They built a 20,000-squarefoot French chateau and staffed it with 13 servants, and she bore a child, Hank junior. As the years passed, Henry Senior took his son on expeditions out West, including an early American Forestry Association horseback trip with AMERICAN FORESTS editor Ovid Butler.

After his father's death, Hank junior took over at Brown and Sharpe, but his real loves are video and poetry (see "The Lookout" on page 53). The poems express a side of his nature inherited from a mother who combined business sense with dreamy mysticism. Her daughter-in-law remembers Mrs. Sharpe as "self-confident, imaginative, witty, charming, and a risk-taker. "

The elder Mrs. Sharpe was also an art lover. She served on the advisory board of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art and found an outlet for her aesthetic sensitivities by designing a garden for her chateau. Her work apparently impressed Brown University's president-a fact that was to prove significant for Providence.

In 1951 Hank Junior helped with an article Mrs. Sharpe penned explaining how she happened to become the university's volunteer landscape architect. Underneath a catchy title, "Now Brown Is GREEN," she wrote: "When [Brown's president] asked me for my idea of a good planting plan .. I bit like a hungry trout, and forgetting that a university chancellor's wife doesn't usually do such things, I was off . "