Baber Day picnic will again recognize cemetery’s Victorian beauty

POTTSVILLE — The Charles Baber Cemetery, West Market Street, will welcome fall with a Baber Day picnic beginning at 3 p.m. Sept. 7.

The rain date is Sept.8.

The gathering will be free and open to the public, featuring walking tours, entertainment by the Third Brigade Band and picnic food, according to a release from Carol Field, cemetery board member.

The 25-acre Victorian garden cemetery is open to the public from dawn to dusk “every day of the year,” Field said, adding, “It has many walking trails and is particularly beautiful in the fall season with over 55 varieties of trees.”

Storms, however, have wreaked havoc with many of the trees and several must be cut down due to safety concerns. The cemetery board has created an online GoFundMe-Charles Baber Cemetery account to help finance the work.

Field emphasized the multiple fall hues that will begin to encompass greenery at the site. September, she said, will bring the beginning, with leaves on the park’s elms, linden, locust, walnut, cherry, American beech and other trees “changing to pale colors of straw and wheat.”

The Norway maple, she said, “change to cantaloupe colors, while our sycamore maple have peach coloring. Our lonely white ash changes into yellow with bands of carrot coloring. The tuliptree, coffee tree and horse chestnut change into mellow yellow colors.”

In October, Field added, “the ginkgoes turn canary yellow. The sugar maple changes into bright yellows with patches of orange. The London planetrees change to pale yellow with their multi-colored bark of gray and lime. The European Hornbeam changes to butter yellow starting at the tip of the tree and melting downward.”

The “premier performance,” she said, “is our red maples with their red colorings of burgundy, scarlet, garnet and ruby. Our red, white, chestnut, swamp white and pin oaks produce shades of pink, salmon and light red. The dawn redwoods, bald cypress, eastern red cedar and cryptomeria pick up the earth tones of amber and walnut.”

This year, Field continued, windstorms, snowstorms and a tornado caused extensive tree damage. Two damaged oaks must be cut down and “many white pines, because of age and brittleness and for safety reasons, have to be cut down.

“If you care about the demise of these trees,” Field said in the release, “please contribute to the GoFundMe account or to the Baber Cemetery at 200 S. Second St., Pottsville, PA 17901.