'A tree planter's' legacy in Medina

Terry Tomann was a young man in his 30s when a banker friend offered him 16 acres in the northeast part of rural Medina.

The land, marked by a slough and a pond, was two-thirds covered with brush. But what Tomann saw was a place to pursue his passion. In the next 40 years, he and his five sons, and later his grandchildren, filled the land with hundreds and hundreds of trees.

"I am a tree planter, a tree person that takes care of trees," said Tomann, now 72, a retired machinist and runner of 41 marathons. "It's just a passion I have. It's something I am involved with all the time."

Late last month Tomann made sure that anyone can take a walk in his woods. He and his wife, Mary, donated the $150,000 parcel to Medina as a nature preserve.

"I had been thinking about this for years and one day the city maintenance superintendent said 'Terry, did you ever think about donating this land for a park?"' he said. "It's a perfect setting for a nature preserve."

Because money is tight, Medina officials carefully considered maintenance costs before accepting the gift. They concluded that a preserve left in its natural state would require little care. But they also took up Tomann's offer to continue to tend the trees. "They don't want to take my fun away from me," Tomann said.

Medina City Council Member Elizabeth Weir called the land "a generous gift" that will reap dividends as development ramps up in Medina, an exurban city of 5,000 people in western Hennepin County. "This much-loved land, this beautifully cared-for land, will be there for people of Medina to have a connection with nature," she said.

Land donations, while not unprecedented, are unusual, according to the Minnesota Land Trust, a nonprofit agency that protects natural and scenic land.

Medina has a tradition of land grants for parks, said Mayor Tom Crosby. Much of the land for the 37.5-acre Hamel Legion Park was donated by former Medina Mayor Tom Anderson. The 220 acres donated by the Brooks family of Medina to the state is now Wolsfeld Woods, a scientific and natural area. And in 1955, Medina resident Morris T. Baker donated 210 acres to Hennepin County for what is now Baker Park Reserve.

"It's always a fabulous thing that someone has a piece of property that represents an asset that they want to share with the public and give back to the community," said Sarah Strommen, central region conservation director for the Land Trust. At Tomann's request, the land trust established a conservation easement on his land that will preserve it in its natural state forever.

The new park will have mowed grass trails through the trees, many of which are mature, Tomann said. "They are just beautiful. It's a great pleasure just to go walk in the woods."

Rabbits, deer, fox, coyotes and birds inhabit the preserve. For hikers, he brought in big rocks "so people can walk through and pull up a rock, you might say, and just be at peace with the world."

After Tomann bought the land, it took years to clear the brush. He transplanted seedling maple trees from the woods on his nearby 10-acre homestead. Over the years he added evergreens and other deciduous trees.

The initial planting was the easy part, he said. More time-consuming was the watering, which Tomann did tree-to-tree with a 150-gallon tank in the back of a pickup truck.

Also key to the trees' survival was winding plastic tubing three feet up their trunks. Small trees must be protected this way for at least five years, he said, to help fend off bucks during rutting season. "They like to tear those little trees apart," Tomann said, "It's how they learn to fight each other."

Tomann financed his tree crusade with his work as a machinist. In 1968, at age 30, he opened a precision machining company in his garage. It grew to become UMC (Ultra Machining Co.) in Monticello, which makes medical products and employs 130 people, with one of Tomann's sons at the helm.

The family uses the business to further Tomann's cause by buying 5,000 to 6,000 seedling trees a year -- at about $1 apiece -- and giving them to employees to plant. With his sons now grown, he pays his grandsons to help tend the trees.

Laurie Blake • 612-673-1711