Retired horticulturists put down deep roots in Harrisonburg.
Ten years ago, Lynda and Craig Chandler were searching for a new hometown that would keep them close to nature. They found their place — and their community — through JMU’s Edith J. Carrier Arboretum.
Lynda and Craig Chandler
Hometown: Harrisonburg, VA, and Temple Terrace, FL
Favorite JMU cause: Edith J. Carrier Arboretum
Advice for retirees to find community through JMU: The JMU Lifelong Learning Institute is a great way to meet people and share your unique talents. Take a class, or offer to teach one. The Arboretum offers a great place for people to get out in nature and just help a little.
When Craig and Lynda Chandler were researching places to which they could retire during Florida summers, Harrisonburg caught their attention because it was home to James Madison University’s Edith J. Carrier Arboretum. “I think that's fairly unusual for a university to have an arboretum attached to the campus,” Craig said. Unusual — and exactly right for the Chandlers.
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“Here’s this one place where it’s just teeming with life that can teach us.” — Lynda Chandler |
Horticulturists by training, the Chandlers first met in a college chemistry class after switching from design majors. “We both decided we wanted to get into the plant sciences for various reasons,” Lynda said, “so, we ended up across the bench from each other… and a connection was made.” Craig had switched from landscape design, and Lynda had left interior design. “One of the reasons I left interior design was I didn’t feel that I was really learning anything,” she said. “I was yearning to learn, to observe, to cut something open and look how this connects to that.” Before retiring, Lynda worked as a botanical artist, drawing scientifically-accurate plants and seeds, and Craig spent over two decades at the University of Florida developing new strawberry varieties.
Strawberries “are basically a winter crop in Florida,” he said. “I was outside in the cooler, drier weather.” But after Craig retired, he started a small, nonprofit tree-planting service that required him to be outside planting and watering trees during Florida’s summer months. “It can be pretty oppressive with the heat and humidity, so we just started looking for someplace farther north,” he said. “So, in a way, we're climate refugees.”
‘A teaching tool for life’
It was important that the Chandlers live in close proximity to a botanical garden or arboretum where Lynda could teach botanical illustration classes. “I love what I do,” Lynda said. “Because I love it so much, I wanna share it.”
After an initial visit to JMU’s arboretum in 2014, Lynda signed on to teach botanical illustration classes in the summer and served as the arboretum’s first artist-in-residence. “Honestly, it was bold of me to offer to teach art classes at the arboretum,” she said, “but if you are passionate about what you do, find an outlet to share that passion.”
As a teacher, Lynda would take her students on field trips to study plant life as it was, not as it was imagined to be. She’d tell them, “Look at the tree. Look at how it grows, how the branches come off of the trunk…. It’s an organic process.”
As artist-in-residence, Lynda created illustrations of various plants, which were printed on cards and sold at her first art show at downtown shop Lady Jane. All of the proceeds were donated to the arboretum. “I was just doing what I could personally,” she said, “and I think that really comes from, I love doing what I do.”
Over the years, the Chandlers have become loyal annual givers in support of the arboretum. “I think arboretums and botanical gardens are constantly underfunded,” Lynda reflected. “And it’s such a teaching tool for life…. Here’s this one place where it’s just teeming with life that can teach us.”
Meeting and weeding
Unlike Lynda, it took Craig about a year to find his community through the arboretum. The Chandlers credit volunteer coordinator, Janis Miller Traas, for her “magic” ability to draw people together for a common cause. “She found a couple other retired people about my age, and she put us together,” Craig said.
The group calls themselves the Forest Stewards, and since 2015, they have volunteered together once a week at the arboretum. Craig said that they primarily remove invasive species from the 125-acre land. Invasive species are often brought into an area by the nursery trade, “and it gets out of hand before people realize it’s a problem,” he said. “One of our volunteers describes invasives as plants that don’t play well with others.”
United by the forest
Over the past nine years, the Forest Stewards have gathered with their spouses for social events. Most recently, a few volunteers started playing disc golf together. “That’s been fun,” Craig reflected. “We’re all about equally as bad.”
“We all come from different professions, but obviously the one thing that unites us is that we all enjoy plants and gardening and being out in the forest,” Craig said. “And they’re all here at JMU,” Lynda added. “The arboretum has been a draw for these people to be in community with each other.”
The arboretum that initially drew the Chandlers to Harrisonburg has since become their home.
“It’s been a win-win situation,” Craig added. “We’ve certainly benefited from it, and hopefully the arboretum has benefited from our involvement.”
