We have, out in the big garden, two lovely Chinese Chestnuts. I am not sure of their exact species. They are, as far as I can tell, dwarfs. In twenty years* they have not grown appreciably larger than about fifteen feet in height and spread. They are quite elegant in their outline and have spectacular yellow/pink/white flowers every year (the hummingbirds adore them). Two years ago, they managed to have fertile seeds. I knew of only one seedling, and carefully tended it in a pot before planting it in prime location this spring. In the week since, I have found two others.
They are lovely trees. But they are also memorials. For me, the two mature ones are inextricably linked to my grandmother, Eileen. They were well loved by her. I presume she planted them when she was still able to garden. Shortly after she planted them, for a myriad of reasons, the garden became an impossible, overrun tangle of Norway maple seedlings and weeds. That they are now focal points of the garden, how I wish I could share that with her. They are, I suspect, (though I shall never know) a dream of a lovely garden deferred a generation. In them there is a lesson: what comes after cannot be controlled, what looks like failure may not be, for even as we fail it may be that in our failure we have cast dormant seeds that will succeed. Victory even in darkness.
*As far as I can tell they are nearly the same size as when I started wandering about in an overgrown tangle as a teenager.
Acair Fearann 
Eileen was so happy with those two trees… the garden wasn’t the jungle then that it became later.
There was a beautiful (still is) line of peonies and phlox which she tended faithfully just next to where she planted the chestnuts and south of the old flagpole. To the West there was a wet area that quickly became an boggy tangle of briers, tall goldenrod, joe pye weed, poke weed etc. with the Norway Maple volunteer at its West edge and to the East there was a young forest of Norway Maple saplings rapidly reaching for the sky. I insisted the Norway Maples be cut down and thus began the Old Garden restoration project. I too wish she could see it and take part in its unfolding. Her Sugar Maple and the Chestnuts are central to it’s design and character. They were,I think, her way of continuing the old garden with the diminishing labor available.