Historical Name: Robert Frost
Common Name: Horsechestnut
Latin Name: Aesculus hippocastanum
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one of our country’s best known poets, and the recipient of four Pulitzer Prizes. While born in San Francisco, he spent many years living in New England. His experiences there are reflected in many of his poems that often depict realistic rural life. He earned a living as a farmer when younger, but went on to teach at Dartmouth, Middlebury, the University of Michigan, and Amherst College. He never earned a college diploma, but was the recipient of over forty honorary degrees. Late in his life he was awarded the United States Congressional Gold Medal, and recited one of his poems at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration. Frost is buried in a family plot behind the Old First Church in the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont.
The Robert Frost Horsechestnut found in UCNJ’s Historic Tree Grove was germinated from a seed collected from the parent tree growing near Frost’s gravesite in 2005. It was planted into the Grove in 2013.