Public Hearing on Veblen Lease Monday, Jan. 27

The Friends of Herrontown Woods is encouraging supporters to come to council chambers this coming Monday, Jan. 27, 7pm, for a public hearing on Ordinance #2020-2, "authorizing a Lease with the Friends of Herrontown Woods Pertaining to a Portion of Herrontown Woods also know as the "Veblen" Property."

 The initial lease is for five years, with the expectation of a longer term lease to follow as FOHW develops and implements rehabilitation plans for the Veblen House, Cottage, and grounds.

The lease, the product of a yearlong negotiation, comes twelve years after botanist Stephen Hiltner happened upon the abandoned Veblen House while conducting a plant inventory of Herrontown Woods. In 2013, Kurt and Sally Tazelaar joined him to reopen the nature preserve's long neglected trails. They formed a nonprofit the next year, gained supporters to help fight off Mercer County's attempts to demolish the buildings in 2017, and convinced the town of Princeton to take ownership of the preserve. While waiting to gain an official arrangement with the town through the lease, volunteers have been clearing invasive species, sprucing up the grounds of the House and Cottage, and keeping the buildings secure until they can finally be put to the uses the Veblens envisioned nearly fifty years ago.

The meeting will be in council chambers at town hall, 400 Witherspoon Street, beginning at 7pm.

FOHW Begins 2020 With Front Page Article

2020 began auspiciously with a January 1st Town Topics front page article entitled FOHW Volunteers Look Forward to Veblen Property Lease.

The article quotes Mayor Liz Lempert, who described Herrontown Woods as “one of the jewels of Princeton’s park system,” which “had gone mostly untended for decades. We’re very fortunate to have the enthusiastic volunteers of the Friends of Herrontown Woods, who have already done extensive and exceptional maintenance work on the network of trails and stream crossings.”

As FOHW prepares to sign a lease with Princeton to begin rehabilitating the Veblen House and other structures left to the public trust long ago by Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen, we look forward to adding to the ways the buildings can complement the hundreds of acres of preserved land along the eastern Princeton Ridge, and making them one more component of the Veblens' wonderful legacy in Princeton.

As stated in the Town Topics article:

“We’ve come to treasure being a part of Veblen’s legacy, and we want to tell people about it and about what one person can do,” Hiltner said. “Veblen saw the connections between geometry and woodland trails, between intellect and nature.”

In an example of remarkable serendipity, the article was noticed by an advocate of "dry stone walling" who lives on an island in Ontario and does daily searches for cultural heritage sites around the world. She then contacted a friend who grew up in Princeton and now builds stone walls in Vermont. The friend contacted us, came to visit, and gave us insights into how to repair walls in Herrontown Woods, including the horse run in the photo.

Remembering Daniel A. Harris

The Friends of Herrontown Woods mourns the loss of a great environmental force in Princeton, Daniel A. Harris, who died on Dec. 26 at the age of 77. A distinguished professor and poet, Daniel became active in local causes after retirement from Rutgers, advocating on issues ranging from civil rights to open space protection.

As stated in an obituary in PlanetPrinceton, "With his wife, Jane Buttars, he founded Save Princeton Ridge, which succeeded in limiting development on the Princeton Ridge in Princeton and in contributing to the creation of the Princeton Ridge Preserve."

Daniel was featured in a Princeton Magazine article entitled Uncommon Princeton Citizens for Common Causes, which describes how he, his wife and others were able to reduce the size of developments on the Princeton Ridge to protect additional acreage. Daniel combined a gentle demeanor with an iron resolve, and worked tirelessly to achieve his goals, using his writing skills and talent to make his case.

As the first individual to send a donation to the Friends of Herrontown Woods, soon after we received official 501c3 status back in 2014, Daniel would often send emails of congratulations when we took a step forward. After we successfully fought off attempts by Mercer County to demolish the Veblen House and Cottage, Daniel cheered us on:

"Wonderful news for you and all your colleagues who won a big victory for Princeton and laborious volunteerism. Bravo! I hope you feel really satisfied by your big win."

We will miss you, Daniel. Thanks for your spirit, your devotion, and a legacy of adding hard-won acreage to the protected land along the Princeton Ridge, which will remain in perpetuity for all to enjoy.

A celebration of life service will be held at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 26 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton.

FOHW's ACHIEVEMENTS 2019

It's been another year of moving FOHWard at Herrontown Woods. The lease we negotiated with the town for the Veblen House and Cottage awaits town ratification this January. We built a new trail and continue to restore existing trails and habitat. The botanical garden is growing into a sea of wildflowers. A girlscout troop and other volunteers contributed to improvements in the grounds and signage. Ongoing research is expanding our appreciation of the vision and pioneering spirit that helped Oswald Veblen achieve so much in the world and our community.

Please support our work, and join us out at Princeton's first nature preserve.

LEASING VEBLEN HOUSE AND COTTAGE

• Completed negotiations with Princeton to lease the Veblen House and Cottage, beginning early in 2020

NATURE PRESERVE STEWARDSHIP

• FOHW volunteers continue to care for 220 acres of public land at Herrontown Woods and Autumn Hill Reservation
• A very wet spring prompted many trail improvements towards making trails useable year-round
• Constructed a new trail through 7.5 acres of sloping woodland donated to Princeton in 2018 through FOHW’s initiative
• Botanical Garden: With ongoing care, we are transforming a forest opening into a sea of native wildflowers and grasses to feed summertime pollinators, with 100 native plant species.
• Collaborating with Town on control of invasive species

VEBLEN HOUSE AND COTTAGE

• Keeping buildings secure and dry
• Evaluating structures in preparation to begin repairs in 2020
• Converting window covers to shutters to expedite window repair.
• Redirecting runoff away from buildings and into attractive raingardens
• Grounds around house and cottage mowed, maintained, invasive plants removed, paths installed.
• Nurturing an edible forest of pawpaws, hazelnuts, butternuts, persimmons and plums.

EDUCATION AND OUTREACH:

• Girlscouts Cadette Troop 72905 installed interpretive signage telling the history of the Veblen House and Cottage
• Designed and produced educational flip cards for nature adventure backpacks available at the Princeton Public Library
• Ongoing research and website posts about nature and the fascinating history of Veblen House at VeblenHouse.org, FOHW.org, and PrincetonNatureNotes.org
• Renewing connections with local schools
• Regular nature walks led by area naturalists
• Hosted our second annual Oswald Veblen Birthday BBQ in June. 

BOARD

• New board members and some particularly engaged friends of the preserve are adding their energy and expertise to FOHW’s work.
• Had our second board “retreat” to develop strategic planning

FUNDRAISING

• Additional progress towards our initial goal of raising $100,000.

Thanks to all who have contributed to making these achievements possible.

Creative Reuse at Veblen House

Creative reuse is central to nature's vitality, and a central theme in our work at Herrontown Woods, where houses and a nature preserve, generously donated long ago for public use, had been left to languish for lack of care and attention.

As a formal lease moves towards town ratification early in 2020, we've been doing some small fixes at Veblen House and grounds, as part of our stewardship of the property. Most of the invasive species have been cut back, reopening vistas of the stonework and gardens. Some small berms and swales have nicely diverted surface runoff away from the house to feed raingardens. In preparation for last summer's Veblen Birthday BBQ, we expanded parking simply by cutting back vegetation that had long disguised the original width of the gravel driveway.

More recently, we collected lawn signs after the fall election and have used them as shingles to repair the wellhouse, which had lost its roof over the years. A few scavenged boards and the lawn signs were all that was needed to put the well house right again.

One of our board members, Peter Thompson, contributed a couple rainbarrels that are now catching runoff from gutters we added to the roof of the garage. Since there's no running water as yet at Veblen House, the collected rainwater will be handy for watering new plants during next year's growing season.

Also near the Veblen House, we've installed a leaf corral that holds leaves, but also has a critter-proof central cylinder that can hold food scraps. Once the corral is filled, the leaves will disguise the food scrap composting and provide insulation to speed decomposition. Earthworms and other decomposers rise up from the ground and into the leaves and food scraps to do their work. No turning of the contents is required.

The leaf corral, called a "Wishing (the Earth) Well" because it looks a bit like a wishing well for leaves instead of coins, made a good conversation piece at the end of our autumn nature walk.

Here's what it looks like with some snow and some leaves, which surround and disguise the inner cylinder of food scraps, brought by one of our board members who lacks a home compost bin.

A Walk in the Woods

Auspicious weather and a nice turnout made for a lovely fall walk through Herrontown Woods this past Saturday.

We started with a brief tour of the botanical garden next to the parking lot, where storms in recent years have knocked down the grove of white pines, leaving a gap in the forest. Last year, FOHW volunteers rescued this gap from a host of invasive species, and this year's rains fed a robust wave of weeds that had to be subdued. These interventions have made room for 100 native plant species, including sun-loving wildflowers like ironweed and Joe-Pye-Weed that feed pollinators in the summer when the forest has little nectar to offer. Shrubs already growing in the preserve, like blackhaw Viburnum, serviceberry, alternate-leaved dogwood, and wild azalea, are also benefitting from the additional sunlight and protection from deer that they get in this managed forest clearing.

Some sights photographed were these edible berries of blackhaw Viburnum

and some leaves of white oak that looked like they'd had paint spilled on them.

Deeper in the preserve, the blooms of witch hazel came as a surprise. As so often happens, people are more familiar with the spring-blooming asian witch hazels that are grown as ornamentals on Princeton campus and elsewhere, while the less-encountered native blooms quietly in local woodlands in the fall.

The remnants of a bird's nest looked like a beard. We walked up onto the ridge, past the boulder field, and made a stop at the cliff. There was talk of fire's historic beneficial role in woodlands, how the boulders came from igneous upwellings rather than from glaciers, which didn't make it this far south, and the past logging that can still be seen in the multi-trunked trees that originated as stump sprouts after a tree was cut down long ago.

Afterwards we headed to the Veblen House grounds for some refreshments, more conversation, and some tree climbing. Thanks to all of those who came and added to the enjoyment of the walk.

Fall Nature Walk, Saturday, October 19

On Saturday afternoon, October 19 at 2pm, join us for a Nature Walk in Herrontown Woods. The walk will be led by botanist Stephen Hiltner. Meet in the main parking lot, down a short street across Snowden Lane from the entrance to Smoyer Park. We'll check out this year's crop of wildflower seed in the phoenix garden, do some leaf identification along the way to a scenic overlook, then gather afterwards next to Veblen House for refreshments and conversation.

Rain date if needed will be October 26, same time.

In the photos, sweetgum leaves and a boulder lifted high by the rootball of a toppled tree.

Thanks to the Gert Volpp Family and Friends

A year ago, I had not heard the man's name, but now every time I encounter a father walking with his kids along a trail in Herrontown Woods, I think of Gert Volpp. After doing post-docs alongside Nobel Laureates in chemistry, he and his wife Ching moved to Princeton in 1963. The Veblens had donated Herrontown Woods as Princeton's first nature preserve only six years before, and Elizabeth Veblen was still living next to it in what we now call the Veblen House. The Volpps started a family, and before long Gert began bringing his kids to Herrontown Woods for hikes. Many others who grew up in Princeton remember the Volpps, and that time in the 60s and 70s when Herrontown Woods served as the primary destination for Princetonians wanting to immerse themselves in nature.

When Gert died earlier this year at the age of 88, his daughters and son remembered those days and asked friends of the family to contribute to our Friends of Herrontown Woods nonprofit in his memory. They appreciated that our group of volunteers had adopted the preserve in 2013, reopening trails that had all but disappeared for lack of maintenance. Thanks so much to the Volpps and their many friends from around the country who have now given more than $4000 to help us maintain the trails and create interpretive signage!

Gert was an avid hiker who loved adventure, and I can't help but think that the boulders of Herrontown Woods reminded him of his many hikes in the Alps. He left behind a wonderful collection of stories from his life, called Opa Stories, with adventures, quiet humor and life lessons, beginning with his childhood in Germany. Much of it can be read online at the link.

The obituary, pasted below, tells of a remarkable life and loved ones. It's fitting that Gert has a brother named, Kurt, given that Kurt Tazelaar has been the main force in restoring and improving the trails at Herrontown Woods.

Born in Lörrach, Germany, in July 1930, he was the second son of the late Anna Zeller and Otto Volpp. He received his Ph.D. degree summa cum laude from the University of Basel with a doctoral thesis on the structure of the African arrow poison ouabagenin (“Zur Konstitution des Ouabeginins”) under the direction of Nobel Laureate Thaddeus Reichstein. He arrived in the U.S. in 1958 to begin a five-year postdoctoral fellowship in chemistry at Harvard University, where he engaged in a total synthesis of colchicine with Nobel Laureate Robert Burns Woodward. At Harvard he met Ching Yuan, a postdoctoral fellow working with Nobel Laureate Konrad Bloch. The two were married in Oxford, England, where Ching, originally from Beijing, had a second postdoctoral fellowship with Sir Ewart Jones. They settled in Princeton in 1963, where they raised four children. Gert lived in Princeton for 55 years.

In 1963 Gert began a 38-year career at FMC Corporation, serving as Director of Commercial Development, Research and Development, Agricultural Products Group from 1978-2001. He traveled worldwide negotiating contracts with research laboratories for insecticide research and development. Initially focused on Japan and Western Europe, he extended the purview of FMC’s negotiations to Australia, China, Korea, India, and Eastern Europe. He held patents in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Spain. Switzerland, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, Belgium, South Africa, the Philippines, Romania, and the Soviet Union.

He was predeceased by his wife Ching, and is survived by a brother, Kurt Volpp of Mosbach, Germany; a sister, Helga Reichel Kessler of Rheinfelden, Germany; three daughters, Sophie and Leti of Berkeley, Calif., and Serena of New York City; a son, Kevin, of Wynnewood, Pa.; and seven grandchildren, Daniel, Anna, Thea, Julia, Daphne, Nico, and Liliana.

Gert was an avid hiker, and loved hiking in the Alps. He spent his 80th birthday hiking in Yosemite. Until the birth of his children, he enjoyed piloting both small planes (the Cessna 182) and gliders. For his 86th birthday, he went paragliding, jumping from the Elfer mountain near Innsbruck, Austria. He was also an excellent storyteller, and a member of the memoir writing group at the Princeton Senior Resource Center, where he began his memoir, Opa Stories.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Friends of Herrontown Woods (fohw.org) in his memory.

The Friends of Herrontown Woods is grateful for donations as we work to bring Herrontown Woods back to its former natural and cultural glory, including renovation of the Veblen House and Cottage.

An Account of FOHW's 2nd Annual Veblen Birthday BBQ Bash

The Friends of Herrontown Woods held our second annual Veblen Birthday BBQ Bash this past Sunday on the Veblen House grounds. Thanks to all those who helped with preparations, and of course thanks to all those who came, bringing food, companionship, ideas, and even a poem about Veblen and Einstein.

Perry Jones was one of three grillmeisters who kept the hotdogs and hamburgers coming, adding that real BBQ feel to all the other food offerings. The non-meat versions were reportedly as tasty as the real thing.

It's a pleasure to gather and enjoy each other's company in this tranquil setting at the edge of Herrontown Woods.

Art teacher Sally Tazelaar brought rocks and paints,

with some beautiful results.

Some of Inge Regan's nature photos, to be found in the public library's borrowable adventure backpacks, made it onto the windows of the house.

The grounds of the Veblen House had been groomed, being careful to avoid mowing down the occasional green fringed orchid just coming into bloom. How many lawns have orchids growing in the grass?

Staying true to the theme of found treasures, the fish pond had gained a border of flagstones rescued two years ago from the patios of two houses on Snowden Lane just prior to their demolition. It was the heavy rains this spring that triggered the thought of improving the footing around this pond that dates back to Veblen days.

Hula hoop and ping pong didn't quite happen,

but some volleyball and badminton did, on a patch of meadow mowed for the occasion.

A few of us took a walk through what could be called an Edible Forest of pawpaws, hazelnuts, and butternuts all planted in recent years. All were grown or rescued from local populations.

The next day, June 24, Oswald Veblen's actual 139th birthday, a letter from one of the attendees, James Firestone, appeared in the local press, about what Veblen's transformative legacy in Princeton means to him.

All in all, a pleasurable and rewarding gathering to celebrate Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen's living legacy.

June 23: Veblen Birthday BBQ Bash

SAVE THE DATE AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS: 

Sunday, June 23, 2-5pm,

the 2nd ANNUAL VEBLEN BIRTHDAY BBQ BASH!

The Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW) will be hosting an event on the grounds of Veblen House at Herrontown Woods. Food, drink, games, and socializing, to celebrate the 139th birthday of mathematician and visionary Oswald Veblen. He and his wife Elizabeth donated Herrontown Woods as Princeton's first nature preserve in 1957.

We will provide a grill, hotdogs, hamburgers, and refreshments. Potluck offerings of food/drink are encouraged.

In honor of Veblen's mathematical work on trajectories, we'll have places to play volleyball, badminton, and pingpong, along with tours of raingardens, the horserun, and other features of the refurbished grounds. Also, some art activities for kids.

PARK IN THE VEBLEN DRIVEWAY AT 474 HERRONTOWN ROAD.
Or park in the main Herrontown Woods parking lot off of Snowden Lane, and walk up to the house (scroll down at this link for map). Facilities if needed are a short drive away at Smoyer Park.