The Massachusetts Arborists Assocation bare-root workshops — one in August 2008, and one in August 2009 — have been spreading word through the Commonwealth about the benefits of air-tool tree transplanting, and word is travelling throughout Massachusetts horticulture circles now.
A couple of weeks ago I was chatting with Kristen DeSouza, one of the horticulturists at the New England Wild Flower Society‘s Garden In The Woods, and she mentioned that she had passed my name along to Sonia Baerhuk, who tends the grounds at Watertown’s Perkins School for the Blind. Kristen told me that Sonia and her crew have been using air tools to transplant trees on the school’s grounds for the last several months, and suggested that I get in touch with her.
And so last Thursday, a couple of emails and a phone call later, I pulled in to the visitor’s parking area at the Perkins School. Sonia soon arrived in one of the grounds department’s Gators. She very kindly showed me around the campus, explaining that a new and large building project had required the removal of dozens of large trees.
It’s a scenario typical of many institutional sites: a program outgrows its home, the phasing of a master plan leads to a shifting of facilities or the construction of a new building, and the vegetation on site must either be removed or relocated. Having worked at Perkins for several years, Sonia was no stranger to this course, of events, but still, she had been dismayed to see so many large specimen trees being cut and fed into the chipper.
Though the grounds crew does most of its own tree work, over the years they have called in arborists for their expertise, and Sonia knew and trusted Matt Foti’s expertise. Matt had told her about the air-tool method, and on the strength of his recommendation, she signed up for the MAA’s Elm Bank bare-root workshop this past August. At it, she absorbed as much information as possible. She came away from the day’s event convinced that air-tool excavation and transplant was the best way for her crew to relocate any salvageable campus trees.
So Sonia and her boss Rich Falzone equipped the crew with an Air Spade and an Air Knife, coveralls, eye protection, ear protection, and respirators, and began to direct the relocation of trees.
To date, the Perkins crew — Sonia Baerhuk, Rolando Ortega, Mynor Tobar, and Santo Masciari — has moved several 15-20′ Norway spruce, a fastigiate white pine, a Forest Pansy redbud, several apples, and a beautifully structured 25-30′ tall Halesia.
On the day I visited, they were ready to move another Norway spruce from a location that is slated to become a pondside patio. Its new home would be a lawn next to a parking lot to which they had already moved a number of evergreens. The new planting is beginning to screen the lot from adjacent buildings; over time, this grove will shade the parking lot and the walkway near it.
Sonia Baerhuk marking the new home of a 15' Norway spruce to be relocated.
Fifteen-foot Norway spruce in its original location next to the campus pond. The crew discovered that the Norway's roots were interwoven with roots from other nearby trees. This tree was flat on the side facing the fence.
Currently, the grounds crew rents compressors. These two generated air for an Air Knife and an Air Spade. Note the plywood barriers set up to prevent soil overspray onto the lawn. In this project, the crew did not dig a trench to hold blown-out soil; they simply started blowing soil out from the trunk and followed the roots out to and beyond the dripline.
Sonia and Rolando, kitted out in their PSE: coveralls, gloves, hats and hoods, ear protection, eye protection, and respirators.
Blowing soil off the roots took about three hours. Sonia likes to divide the root mass diameter into quadrants and work systematically, while Rolando prefers to work all around the tree; when they work in tandem they use whichever method fits the site conditions best.
Edges of the original B&B root ball are barely visible here; it was roughly 24-30" across. Rolando and Sonia discovered the wire basket still around it. They also discovered that the root flare sat several inches down in the original root ball.
The spruce was anchored with a thick mat of fibrous roots; the crew found virtually no roots larger than 1/2" in diameter. Here, they are pruning root ends under the eighteen-inch deep mat.
Still pruning the mat, and rolling it up toward the trunk to blow soil out from under the tree.
The root mat rolled up and bound in burlap for further blowing-out and moving.
Project site: The Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA
Project manager: Sonia Baerhuk
Project crew: Rolando Ortega, Mynor Tobar, Santo Masciari
Deborah Howe
Taking Place In The Trees 