It was with the coming of the young Andrew D. White, as Professor of History, with his youthful enthusiasm and memories of the "glorious elms of Yale," that the first effective effort for the improvement of the Campus began. He says, in his Autobiography:
Without permission from any one, I began planting trees within the university enclosure; established, on my own account, several avenues; and set out elms to overshadow them. Choosing my trees with care, carefully protecting and watering them during the first two years, and gradually adding to them a considerable number of evergreens, I preached practically the doctrine of adorning the Campus. Gradually some of my students joined me; one class after another aided in securing trees and planting them, others became interested, until, finally, the University authorities made me "superintendent of the grounds," and appropriated to my work the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars a year. So began the splendid growth which now surrounds those buildings.
His example was doubtless infectious, for the Ann Arbor citizens continued their tree-planting efforts around the outside of the Campus in the spring of 1858, while a group of sixty trees presented to the University were set out inside. The seniors of '58 left a memorial in the shape of concentric rings of maples about a native oak in the center of the Campus, one of the few survivals of the original forest growth, which has since become known as the Tappan Oak, and is now marked by a tablet on a boulder placed there in later years by '58. Many of these maples still survive, though all traces of the circles are lost. The juniors also set out another group further to the east, while Professor Fasquelle planted a number of evergreens east of the north wing to balance a similar group of Professor White's at the south. The maples outside the walk on State Street were also the gift of Professor White and were balanced by a similar row of elms on the inside, given by the Faculty of the Literary Department. This general interest in Campus improvement did not escape the Regents and successive appropriations, though comparatively small, continued the work until Michigan now has, in the words of the father of the movement, written forty-six years after his work was undertaken, "one of the most beautiful academic groves to be seen in any part of the world,"--a monument to him and to the students of his time.