Black Gum Tree, Green Hill Cemetery
Beg forgiveness, not ask permission was Bill Craft’s philosophy when it came to planting
trees and shrubs. And the city is more beautiful as a result
By Lee Rogers
G
reensboro philanthropist and millionaire Joe Bryan was once seated
next to Bill Craft at the Greensboro Country Club. While they
waited for the main event to start, Bryan leaned over to Craft and
said, “Bill, I have a park named after me too, but they don’t make me
work in it.”
No one made William Hugh Craft work on Craft Park, once a
barren stretch of woodland between Dover Road and Nottingham
Drive in Irving Park, but now a horticultural menagerie. Until he died at 81
last December, Craft spent his life permanently altering Greensboro’s landscape because he couldn’t resist doing otherwise. Bypassing rules, committees
and meetings, Craft blithely planted shrubs and trees in any empty space, anywhere, regardless of who owned it. According to his family, Craft’s policy was to
“beg for forgiveness, not ask for permission.” Craft figured if the city didn’t like
what he planted, they could dig it up.
Though generous and public spirited, Craft had a sneaky side when it came
to plants. His family reports that he had “various hidden greenhouses around
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August/September 2011
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Photograph of Bill Craft by Ann Stringfield with Friends of Green Hill Cemetery
Photographs of Trees by Joel Gillespie
Greensboro’s Johnny Appleseed
the city” where he would adopt and propagate
stray plants in No. 10 cans he begged off cafeteria
workers at Irving Park Elementary. Many were
dug from the wild, a practice that is frowned upon
nowadays by the horticulturally correct. Scrounging
dying plants from local nurseries or buying bareroot
shrubs and trees from mail-order catalogues, he altered Greensboro’s landscape one day and one plant
at a time. “He liked stuff that was native,” says his
son David Craft. “But not necessarily to here.”
Bill Craft’s father, Floyd Hugh Craft, moved to
Greensboro from Norfolk and resurrected a defunct
insurance agency with great success. Bill Craft met
his wife, Eve, at a ladies’ boarding house — but in
accordance with the proper way out-of-towners met
ladies at the time — at one of the dinners when the
gentlemen were invited from neighboring boarding
houses. As a dutiful child, Bill Craft took over the
family business after his father died, even though he
would have preferred a career as a botany professor
or doctor.
E
ve Craft remembers their first date. He
asked her to go to lunch, she says, “and
then he made me pay for it. I should have
known.” On their honeymoon to Sea
Island, Georgia, he filled the bathtub with
camellia blossoms. How romantic, you may
say. Ask Eve Craft. She says camellias were the
only thing blooming at the time and her
husband loved them so much he filled the
tub with blossoms. Actually, it was a little
annoying, she says, because she had to empty the
tub every time she wanted to bathe.
Bill Craft was also wild about Spanish moss.
Never mind that it wouldn’t grow in Greensboro.
His son Daniel Craft tells about the time his dad
stuffed a couple of his sons into the car and drove
them down past Fayetteville. He filled the whole
back of the station wagon “with Spanish moss and
chiggers” so that they spent the two-hour ride back
to Greensboro itching and scratching the entire
time. Bill Craft spent that evening down in the park,
flinging wads of Spanish moss into the trees because
he said he “just wanted to see if I can get this stuff to
grow here,” Daniel Craft recalls. “That’s when I began to think my dad might be a little crazy,” he adds.
His planting methods were typical of his energetic approach to life. No muss, no fuss. One of his
last projects was establishing the Palmetto Trail
that starts at Old Battleground Road. He planted
an even 100 palmettos along the trail, but some of
his planting methods were questionable, sometimes
involving just throwing out seeds on either side of
the trail. On a recent hike, one surviving, stragglylooking palmetto was spotted. He had a similar attitude toward raising his nine children. Call it benign
neglect. As David Craft put it, they were started off
right and planted in good dirt. And according to his
pastor, the Rev. Tim Patterson, he loved to say that
The Art & Soul of Greensboro
Loblolly Pine Tree, Green Hill Cemetery
Ginkgo Row, Green Hill Cemetery
August/September 2011
O.Henry 61
Tulip Poplar, Green Hill Cemetery
“each one is a college graduate, and each one is making a real contribution to
the world, none of them has been in jail for more than one night, and
none of them are attorneys.”
A
s with many gardening fanatics, Bill Craft’s gardening attire became
legendary. Daniel Craft tells the story about the time he and his wife-to-be,
Kathy, were on a romantic bike ride and date in the Green Hill Cemetery.
Suddenly, they spotted an older man busily digging holes and dressed in
nothing but a black Speedo swimsuit and tennis shoes. “Oh God! It’s my
dad,” Daniel Craft thought, and sure enough it was his father, hard at
work. Bill Craft recorded putting in 497 plants in Green Hill Cemetery,
including 25 maple species, 26 hollies, 10 magnolias, 39 pines and 57 oaks.
Ginkgos, Black Gums and Poplar trees were also among is favorites. He took special
pleasure in conducting tours of the cemetery, perhaps because he knew so many of the
people buried there.
Ann Springfield continues the tradition of tours on Mother’s Day and Halloween
weekends and upon request. She calls her tours “The Plants and the Planted” (www.
foghc.org for more information). She learned much from Bill Craft, but there are any
number of stories he told which she won’t. “Mr. Craft, I’m not saying that,” she once
told him. “You can say that because you knew that person, but I can’t.”
Bill Craft treated the city of Greensboro as a kind of grand horticultural experiment. The number of different plants and plant species he introduced is staggering.
This is especially important in a day and age when public landscaping and American
regional diversity are being smothered by boring monoculture purchased mostly from
Lowe’s and Home Depot. But more to the point, Bill Craft’s quirky personality, his
Johnny Appleseed zest for life and his mischievous streak live on in the city he imbued
with his passion for plants. As his son David Craft once observed, “He liked pushing
the edge and seeing what he could get away with.” OH
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