AUBURN — It took him three tries, but Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze finally got the job done.

Freeze, who had just led the Tigers to a season-opening win over UMass, wasn't quite sure how long of a tail to let out before making an attempt. He'd been on the wrong end of the tradition before during his time at Ole Miss, but never did he have a chance to enjoy the sacred ritual from a winner's perspective.

"That's the way to do it?" Freeze asked the gathered crowd before gearing up for his second throw.

"That's the technique," a fan replied.

Freeze got the toilet paper to stick on his third toss, draping it over a branch on one of the two iconic oak trees at Toomer's Corner: "You guys are the absolute best," Freeze said to the group assembled diagonally across the street from Toomer's Drugs. "We're so thankful to have you as supporters."

"We're so thankful for you," a different fan quickly quipped.

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That win against the Minutemen was significant in more ways than one. Yes, it was the first victory of the Freeze era at Auburn, a period that has, so far, been abundant with optimism and hope for the future. It also marked the first time the two main oak trees at Toomer's Corner could be rolled since they were planted in 2017.

Auburn made the declaration that the trees were healthy enough to participate in the celebratory event Aug. 8. But the process of getting them there started years before, and it's been captained by university arborist Alex Hedgepath since he returned to the Plains in September 2015.

"My role in relation to the trees is really, truly just one piece of a big puzzle in which a lot of other pieces are extremely important and vital to success," Hedgepath said. "But my role is really kind of providing that oversight in the way of tree care."

Quercus Virginiana

The replacements for the Toomer's Oaks — the originals were two southern live oaks that were poisoned sometime in early 2011 by Harvey Updyke, an Alabama fan who was enraged by the Crimson Tide's loss in the 2010 Iron Bowl and by someone placing a Cam Newton jersey on the statue of late Alabama coach Bear Bryant — were planted in February 2015, seven months prior to Hedgepath accepting his role with the university.

But Hedgepath's expertise would quickly need to be used. The trees, which have a scientific name of Quercus Virginiana, were set ablaze after the Tigers topped LSU in September 2016. A then-29-year-old Auburn resident was arrested, eventually plead guilty to charges related to the incident and apologized to Auburn fans.

"I was here for that," Hedgepath said in an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser this week. "We immediately sprang into action to see how bad the damage was from that fire. ... The tree was determined to need to be replaced, and that’s why we have the two that we have now."

The two trees standing at the corner now came from Marshall Tree Farm in Morriston, Florida. They arrived to Auburn with a diameter of about 10 inches and have grown to currently be around 12-13 inches, Hedgepath said. And they're still getting bigger.

Transplanting a tree of that size typically will either freeze a tree's growth or dial it back for some time. Hedgepath explained a good rule of thumb for transplanting is that for every inch in diameter a tree is, it'll take a year for it to respond to transplant shock: "We can only expect these trees to take about 10 years to get established in their new growing condition."

The trees are wrapping up their sixth growing season since being planted at the northeast corner of campus. They've been assisted in growing by the efforts of Hedgepath and his team, who perform weekly checks on the new icons. The goal is to grow the canopy as large as possible and as fast as possible — giving fans the most real estate to decorate with toilet paper — but not to the detriment of the trees.

Plenty of science and maintenance goes into the upkeep of the trees, including the use of a Silva Cell. The Silva Cell is a device placed under the brick plaza between the two trees that, as Hedgepath puts it, is like "a cinder-block puzzle" made from a durable synthetic material.

Soil in an urban setting can be affected by the activity occurring above it. With a place as popular and high in foot traffic as Toomer's Corner is, the Silva Cell is designed to provide "uncompacted soil space" for the trees' roots to grow.

'Those little seedlings ... became gold'

Hedgepath recalls being a student at Auburn's college of forestry and being assigned the duty of collecting acorns fallen off the original Toomer's Oaks.

It was an opportunity for the college to have a small revenue stream. Students would head to the corner, collect acorns from the ground and begin to grow them as seedlings. The college could then sell them to alumni and the students got to gain real-world experience. It was a win-win.

But when the original Toomer's Oaks were poisoned, their acorns suddenly became much more valuable.

"I don’t know how long they did it, but I graduated in ‘12, which is just after the poisoning," Hedgepath said. "... Once it was determined that the Toomer’s Oaks would die, those little seedlings that were not sold and (were) in possession of the school of forestry became gold."

The two trees planted directly on the corner are the main attraction, but there are 10 others planted across Samford Park between Biggin Hall and Samford Hall. Those 10 trees are direct descendants of the original trees, grown from acorns taken from the Toomer's Oaks and raised in a nursery setting.

"It’s very much like our children," Hedgepath explained. "... Some of them have very similar genetic traits to the original Toomer’s Oaks, but they are not clones. ... I remember watering them as a forestry student."

Although the two main oaks are the exact same type of tree, they are not direct descendants of the originals. That was due to upper administration deciding the descendants Auburn had available were not large enough to fill the respective spaces: "They wanted large live oaks," Hedgepath added.

Achieving establishment

Getting the trees to a point in which they could be rolled was, obviously, always the goal.

Both have "certainly got more growing to do," but with the help of a third-party expert, it was determined the process of rolling the trees and the subsequent cleanup effort wouldn't negatively affect them.

That determination was made due to the trees reaching what Hedgepath called establishment.

"Establishment, in this sense, would indicate that we could walk away from the trees right now and they would survive," Hedgepath said. "... Take all the irrigation out. Just walk away. ... We’re not going to walk away, but (the expert's) report did indicate that the effects of rolling (and) cleanup from rolling would not decrease the condition of the trees."

Hedgepath's thoughts coincided with the third-party expert and he ran the news up the flagpole. Everyone agreed: It was time to revive the tradition and allow the two main trees to be rolled.

"It actually was really providential that it timed well with Hugh Freeze’s first season as head coach," Hedgepath said. "There was already a lot of buzz. People were excited that he was here, felt like it was a new chapter. A lot to be hopeful for (with) Auburn football, specifically."

Hedgepath added: “Being a forestry graduate, knowing how important trees were before the poisoning and how even more important it became after the poisoning, I certainly felt super humbled to be a part of that story. ... To be a part of that is very humbling and I’m honored to be a part of tree care at Auburn. Obviously I have a lot of interest in overall campus canopy maintenance and management, so it’s not just those two.

"But I think that because of what happened (to the) Toomer’s Oaks — (the) poisoning — and the way that the Auburn family rallied around that and did not let the tradition die, (and) instead put even more focus on getting live trees back on the corner, that spoke volumes to me about the community’s interest in that regard. I’m just happy to be a part of it."

Richard Silva is the Auburn athletics beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. He can be reached via email at rsilva@gannett.com or on Twitter @rich_silva18.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Auburn's oak trees at Toomer's Corner can be rolled. Here's the story