Written and photographed by Kevin West
Having planted himself on the corner of Main and Bridge Streets in Great Barrington, near the insurance company where he works his day job, Michael Peretti shifted from foot to foot as he talked, like a paper birch swayed by spring breezes. The animating subject was his side hustle. It doesn’t pay much, only a modest stipend from the public coffers, but it does get Peretti away from his desk and into some stately, if silent, company. In his off-hours, Peretti serves the people of Great Barrington as their part-time tree warden.
“It’s just passion,” Peretti said when asked why he does it—why, since 2008, he’s been keeper of Great Barrington’s public trees, an office mostly ignored until a hazardous branch makes a resident wonder who will pay to remove it. “You don’t do it for money. I wanted to stay involved and to give back. But the main thing is, it’s passion for trees.”
Peretti is one of 351 tree wardens in Massachusetts—at least in theory, because Chapter 87 of Massachusetts General Law requires every city and town to name an official caretaker of “public shade trees.” The actual number is likely lower. Not every town can find someone to fill an office that requires, in addition to arboricultural knowledge, a certain indifference to salary. Only the largest municipalities can afford a career staffer; in most places the post is modest, and sometimes the work, by default, falls to the road crew.
Peretti’s 17-year tenure is impressive, but he’s still a junior member compared to Robert McCarthy Jr. of Williamstown, who has served as tree warden there for 35 years—matching the tenure of his late father, Robert McCarthy Sr. “When I was really young,” McCarthy recalled, “the streets were lined with American elms, big trees that canopied the streets. I never thought I would see devastation like Dutch elm disease.”
The antique word “warden” comes from an ancient root meaning “to watch out for.” Massachusetts legislators who drafted Chapter 87 in the 1890s envisioned wardens as guardians—protecting both people from trees and trees from people. By sad necessity, wardens are often called upon to prune or remove trees weakened by disease, salt, or age. On happier days, they are municipal Loraxes, empowered to plant and steward shade trees as vital public resources alongside parks, roads, and libraries.
Public shade trees have been planted in the Berkshires since the early 1800s, prized for their beauty and cooling effects. Today, they are valued for even more: sequestering carbon, filtering air pollution, and slowing stormwater runoff. But 21st-century trees are under stress—from invasive pests like the emerald ash borer to extreme weather and human infrastructure.
“There really isn’t enough money to do the work we need to do,” said McCarthy, who turns to grants to fund replanting. “Most of our budgets are being eaten up by taking down the ash trees.”
In Great Barrington, however, Peretti finds satisfaction in the town’s downtown trees, planted during the 2015 reconstruction. Blight-resistant elms, yellowwoods, serviceberries, hornbeams, and hawthorns now line Main Street, replacing a monoculture of aging Bradford pears.
“There is no credit in taking a tree down,” said Peretti. “The best part is to see a replacement come in and to know the next generation—or the one after that—will sit in its shade.”
