Improvements to the Cedar Dell Village Landscape were designed and installed by students and professors Donna Huse (Sociology) and Jim Sears (Biology) in the course "Landscape and Garden" in the fall of 199 9 with support from Grounds personnel. Based on interviews of residents and workers at Cedar Dell, each of six student groups developed a design proposal for one or more areas of the Dell. Parts of each of these were merged into a common design plan, and by the end of October students began planting the large (2-3" caliper) flowering pears that had been donated to the University by a Dartmouth resident.
Fifty trees, including 33 flowering pears, 5 flowering crabapples, 2 Virginia magnolias, 1 weeping candied red crab apple, 2 thornless honey locust, 2 'Red Sunset' red maples, 3 Yoshino flowering cherries, and 2 Himalayan white birches, and as many shrubs, were planted. Trees and shrubs were planted throughout the apartment complex and at the inner entrance to Cedar Dell Village. Two stone walls were planned by students. These were built over the winter by Grounds personnel to form a 'gateway' to the Dell at the Ring Road intersection. Plans were designed for across the Ring Road for a line of Yoshino cherries from the Ring Road to the Fine Arts building. These were later installed in the spring of 2000 (See Cherry Tree Allee).
From its inception Cedar Dell village had been without appreciable landscaping other than islands of natural vegetation. The housing units were stark and barren. The guiding principles in placement of trees and shrubs throughout Cedar Dell Village were to bring the building and surrounding space into human scale, provide a transition from buildings to woods, and to soften and humanize the space between the buildings.
