At a Meeting of the
Faculty of Vassar College
held
December seventeenth, nineteen hundred
and seventy-five, the following
Memorial
was unanimously adopted:
It is all but superfluous, to say nothing of being hackneyed
as well, to state that Sven Sward was an uncommon man. From l954
until his retirement in 1975, he was, in addition to his regular
duties, a highly respected and effective teaching member of first,
the Department of Plant Science, and then, the Department of
Biology. Throughout the years of planning and throughout all the
architectural alterations in the plans, his was the only name that
ever appeared on the drawings and it remained on the drawings nearly
to the final set.
Although it was a difficult act to follow, Sven Sward took on
the teaching of horticulture two years following the retirement of
Henry Downer. Between Sven Sward and Henry Downer, Vassar has en-
joyed the rare good fortune of having had half a century of dis-
tinguished and inspired teaching of the science, as well as the art,
of growing plants. Though not a flamboyant man and given to letting
the plants speak for themselves, Sven Sward still communicated his
very special feeling for plants, be they weeds or orchids. Over
the years, the horticulture course had quietly grown from a small
handful of students to one of the most eagerly desired courses in
the Biology curriculum. For the fall of l975, nearly one hundred
students, all prospective seniors, stood in line for hours to pre-
register for the l6 available places. His abilities as a profes-
sional horticulturist may be equalled only at places like Kew Gardens
or the greenhouses of Alsmeer.
Plants did have a special meaning for him. It seemed as though
each one had for him its own particular spirit, each tree its own
particular dryad. This feeling was communicated more by example
than by precept. One merely had to observe him with plants. One
story is told of him that illustrates this: One day while he was
on his rounds of the campus, he found in the woods by Vassar Lake
an American chestnut that had survived the blight and had produced
a crop of chestnuts. His comment to his companion was, “This has
been a good day“.
In addition to the horticulture class, he had his other duties.
He had been Superintendent of Grounds since 1952. You all know what
that entailed. He saw to it that: snow was scraped from the roads
and shoveled from the walks; lawns were fertilized and cut and in
-2-
the fall raked of leaves; trees were trimmed and the ancient,
tired, diseased and the departed ones removed - and as a conse-
quence supplied firewood to the Vassar community; the horticul-
ture greenhouses near Skinner were maintained, and thereby cut-
flowers of a quality second to none were produced for the college.
His tree and shrub nursery over the years has helped to fill the-
gaps left by the casualties of the Dutch Elm disease, the Ash
blight and Maple dieback.
There was not a tree on the Vassar campus unknown to him.
To an already remarkable collection of plants he had added many
interesting specimens: The Maakia, a Manchurian specimen by Ely;
Tilia euchlora, the Crimean Linden, between the New England Build-
ing and Avery; two Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Dawn Redwood,
a Chinese native, one by Strong and one by Olmsted. He propagated,
by cuttings, the branch mutation he found on one of the Spruce
trees near Main and the President's House. Those cuttings, now
over twenty years old and all of three feet tall he had planted
in front of the Olmsted Greenhouse. The four maples, now more
than 20 years old in the Science Quadrangle of Chemistry, Physics
and Biology were grown from seed and planted by Sven Sward. Acer
griseium, the paperbark maple, also a native of China, he had
planted in a copse of Japanese maples in the Dormitory Quadrangle.
Vassar's only araleaceous tree, Kalopanax, a gift from the Harvard
Arboretum, he had planted between Olmsted and Sanders Physics.
The daffodils on the hillside on the east side of Sunset Lake
are his doing. "The reason they look as though Nature had done it
rather is because after the soil was spaded over and prepared, he
stood in the middle of it and tossed handsful of bulbs into the air;
they were planted where they fell.
lt is some measure of the man that although an old Georgia
pecan had to be cut down when Olmsted was built, he threatened to
nail the builders hide to the Vassar Farm barn door if the §tewartia
trees, one at each end of Olmsted, were harmed in any way. The two
trees are there, hale and hearty.
In a way, this Memorial Minute is unnecessary. Sven Sward has
dozens of living memorials, growing almost everywhere you may look,
anyplace you may walk on the Vassar Campus.
Respectfully submitted,
Francis V. Ranzoni
Paul E. Pfuetze