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Posts Tagged ‘environment’

Team Friends

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

For the last two years, Toby Wolf and I have been working for the Friends of the Public Garden in Boston, developing and implementing plans to renovate the Boylston Street Border, a 10.5′ wide planting strip along Boston Public Garden’s perimeter, between Arlington and Charles Street. It has been an exciting project to shepherd along: we have improved drainage (one puddled area was so bad we called it The Marsh), transplanted mature trees and shrubs to improve their growing situations, added bench pads and benches so visitors can enjoy the garden from among the plants, and we have added in a wonderful array of small trees, ornamental shrubs, a few perennials, and quite a few spring bulbs and ephemerals. Our idea has been to work with the existing rhythm of the border plantings, and to augment it in a way that increases screening from the street while it adds a pleasing show to walkers both inside and outside The Garden. With a Pilot Planting done last year and Phase Two just completed, we have finished the border’s western half, and it looks great:

Boylston Street Border Pilot Area, Boston Public Garden, renovated in 2013 and blooming in Spring 2014. First we had all trees and shrubs pruned, and then we transplanted broadleaf and needled evergreens, added benches, improved drainage, and augmented existing plantings with more evergreen and deciduous shrubs, hosta and astilbe, and thousands of spring bulbs and ephemerals. Renovation will continue until the entire 840-foot long border has been rehabilitated.

Boylston Street Border Pilot Area, Boston Public Garden, renovated in 2013 and blooming in Spring 2014. First we had all trees and shrubs pruned, and then we transplanted broadleaf and needled evergreens, added benches, improved drainage, and augmented existing plantings with more evergreen and deciduous shrubs, hosta and astilbe, and thousands of spring bulbs and ephemerals. Renovation will continue until the entire 840-foot long border has been rehabilitated.

As I say, the project has been funded and made possible by the Friends of the Public Garden, who are a delight to work with.

And now I have a new, quite personal project with the Friends, and it’s a doozie: I’m going to be running the 2015 Boston Marathon as part of Team Friends! For the next five months I’ll be training and raising funds for the Friends and their work in Boston Public Garden, Boston Common, and on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. It’s going to be a great adventure; I have wanted to run a marathon — this marathon — since I was twelve, when I started running. I had to shelve that ambition when I had eye surgery at age 25. Twenty-nine years later (you do the math), this past June I began running again, and realized that my ambition hadn’t died. The Friends offered the opportunity, and I’m taking it. What could be better than to run, raise funds for a cause I truly believe in — the care and fostering of green urban parks in general, and the Public Garden and Boston Common in particular — and get to participate in one of international running’s most renowned events?

For the training period, I’ll be posting photos and notes on some of the parks’ holdings of trees and shrubs, as well as the stray hardscape feature as well. As is the way with any park or garden, life moves right along, and change happens from moment to moment, month to month; I’m looking forward to tracking some of that change in this blog.

If anyone reading this post would like to support my marathon efforts, the Friends and I would welcome any donations. The Friends have raised a high bar for my fundraising; I’m aiming to reach the $10,000 mark by January 1, 2015, so I can concentrate from then on in on training and the race itself. To read more about the marathon and Team Friends, and to make a donation, click on this link.  All donations are fully tax-deductible (great for year-end accounting!); any corporate donation over $1,000 will get a company logo weblink on the Friends’ website (great advertising!), and unless you want to, you won’t be put on any solicitation/mailing lists. I will be so grateful, and so will the Friends.

(Even if you choose not to donate now, please watch this site; you should see some cool examples of well-tended trees in the next few months.)

RS beech buds

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Underground Peek

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Arboriculture, Miscellaneous, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on January 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

It was just over a year ago that an ecologist and ISA-Certified Arborist, Lisa Montana, contacted me from AECOM, the global architectural/engineering giant.  She works in New York City, and is involved on projects that require utility trenching under sidewalks and around the roots of adjacent street trees.  When her project sites have contaminated soils, excavation must take place with shovels and bars, the old approach to bare-rooting plants.  On sites with clean soils, the workers use air tools, which let them remove soil and preserve important tree roots.

Lisa kindly sent me some photos of air-tool trenching projects she has overseen, and with my apologies to her for the long delay, I’m posting them here.  Take a look, and note how persistent and vigorous those critical roots are even underneath concrete pavement.

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This one is a 26″ dbh Honey Locust.

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This astonishing root mass belongs to a 28″ dbh Oak.

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These roots come from an enthusiastic 29″ dbh Norway Maple that needs the rooting area in the lawn beyond the sidewalk.

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This final photo shows a 32″ dbh London Plane whose roots are seeking moisture in the bed beyond the fence.

It appears as if each of these trees is reaching underground toward open ground, where adequate moisture and air can be found to sustain them.  I have been mulling over these photos for some time, and especially since Hurricane Sandy, when so many uprooted New York street trees appeared to have root masses that conformed to the bar-like shape of their planting spaces.  I wonder if those root masses had been cut at some point, as is often done for the reconstruction of a sidewalk or for utility work done in a less sensitive way than AECOMM’s methods.

Thanks, Lisa, for sharing these photos, and giving us a peek at what’s going on under some sidewalks.

Location:  New York City

Arborist In Charge:  Lisa Montana, AECOMM

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Weeping Norway Spruce bare-root transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2010| 2 Comments »

Mark Smith, construction project manager for Belknap Landscape Company in Gilford, NH, sent me photos and a description of the air-tool transplant his company executed with Piscataqua Landscaping recently.  Belknap has been using air tools for transplanting, site preparation (excavating roots at foundation limit lines prior to the foundation excavation), and root forensics, and has also used compressed air to reduce weight in larger B&B-dug root balls being moved.

Here’s what Mark had to say about the Weeping Norway Spruce they recently moved from Baker Valley Nurseries (with light editing):

“We moved a 25+ year old Weeping Norway Spruce that has resided in Baker Valley Nurseries in Rumney for the duration of its life.  This tree stood 10-11 feet tall and at least 12 feet wide on one direction.  The last time this tree was root pruned with a spade was 10 years ago.

Through the spading process we could clearly see where this root pruning occurred.  All said and done we were left with a 25-30′ wide root system…You cannot see that in these pics real well, as we had all the roots coiled up into harnesses and sitting atop the root pan.

I helped Piscataqua with the digging of this and am told so far it looks great in its new home on the coast.  Just to dig and get the tree in the truck took about 4-5 hours with 2 of us spading, and then 4 of us to get the tree in the truck which was actually the worst part.”

The tree before excavation.

Branches tied back to permit easier blowout.

Leader wrapped in burlap to protect it during excavation and moving.

Deepening the excavation.

Root plate covered in wet burlap for the pickup and move.

Guiding the forks for the lift.

Confirming a balanced and firm placement on the forks.

Guiding the lift.

A final spray-down before transport.

No photos yet of the tree in its new location, but when they come in I’ll post them.

Tree and equipment supplier:   Baker Valley Nurseries, Inc., Wentworth, NH

Moved by:

Piscataqua Landscaping Company, Inc., Eliot, ME  (Booth Hemingway and Travis Wright) and

Belknap Landscape Company, Inc., Gilford, NH (Mark Smith)

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Update on Picea glauca ‘Conica’ transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Last week I drove to Wellesley College to see the Dwarf Alberta Spruce that Jim Doyle and Don Garrick had moved bare-root last November.  Fritz Hoffman, an Alaska contractor in town to learn about bare-root transplant work, accompanied me, and we walked and walked along the lakeshore looking for the Spruce.

Well, it wasn’t there.  We turned around, backtracked along the pathway, and came upon a grounds crew working on a plaza installation.  We stopped and met John Olmsted, Manager of Landscape Operations, who told us that the Spruce had died.  He said that despite its loss, the arborists had recently transplanted a Sugar Maple, two Kousa Dogwoods, and an American Smokebush bare-root.

The Dwarf Alberta Spruce didn't make it, but this spring-transplanted Kousa Dogwood may well thrive in this spot.

Later, Jim Doyle told me that he thought they had moved the Spruce to a too-exposed location.  It seemed to fare well through the winter, but in March had turned brown and had to be removed.  We speculated that the move from a very sheltered spot to an open waterfront location might have placed too high a demand on the plant.  It might have survived the dangerous phenomenon of frozen soils and warm air had it been wrapped in burlap, but it’s impossible to know.

Nice trunk flare on the newly transplanted Sugar Maple at Wellesley College.

What is heartening is that the Spruce move came about because Jim and Don took a chance — and though the risk didn’t pan out, the College believed in the possibility of success, and authorized the bare-root moving of four more plants.  When it comes down to a choice, especially on a large campus, between moving or destroying a tree, the opportunity to move and save the tree may make sense.   Actively managing a landscape — especially one with valuable mature trees —  requires this kind of decision-making, and newly available technologies can give greater flexibility in the move-save debate.

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Herbie — what remains

Posted in Miscellaneous, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 9, 2010| 7 Comments »

Yesterday I drove through Yarmouth, Maine, and stopped by the site where Herbie the New England Champion American Elm (Ulmus americana) had lived for over two hundred years before meeting his end this past January (see this post for the story).  I wanted to see Herbie’s stump and get a better idea of what 217 years of tree age looked like in plan view.

It was hard to get a clear measure of the stump.  It was cleanly cut across the root flare, and there were no signs of internal decay at the cut line, which indicates that no root damage — or none of the kind that travels up the trunk and compromises it —  had affected the tree in its life.

This tree was big.  A slice from the bottom of the butt, mounted on table-height legs, would be big enough to seat at least a dozen people quite comfortably, if a bit irregularly.  The following photos show my attempts at comparative scale.

From a distance, the spot where Herbie stood looks like a small paved dais in a big open space.

A pair of Felcos and a water bottle for scale, and still it's hard to fathom the stump's size.

Hmm. This yellow nursery caliper gauge, maxed out at 4 1/4", doesn't come close to an appropriate scale. The school bus in the background ran past before I could catch its image right in front of the stump, but it begins to suggest a comparison.

This angle doesn't help much either, though it certainly illustrates how Herbie dealt with grade change -- he just grew over it.

People walking by help with scale.

Eureka! The handy measuring tape, laid across the stump's widest part, gives at least some numeric sense of size.

Here's a crop from that last photo, showing the stump measuring at its widest point 9'-2". Herbie had plenty of root room, among other advantages, so he could grow to this size.

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Picea glauca bare-root transplant

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

At New England Grows, I met Jim Doyle, one of Wellesley College‘s team of arborists. He told me about an air-tool transplant that he and a colleague performed last November at the College.  He was kind enough to send photos, and with them included this text, which I have edited only slightly:

“My colleague Don Garrick and I performed the transplant on Nov. 3rd 2009.  The reason for the transplant was that the tree, a Picea glauca ‘Conica’ (Dwarf Alberta Spruce), had outgrown its current location and was providing too much shade to the greenhouse.  An old accession tag we found told us that the tree had been planted in 1956.

The tree in its original location, quite close to the greenhouse.

Jim using the airspade to locate the root zone's outer limits.

Don digging a trench outside of the root zone.

In this and in the next two pictures, Jim removes soil from the Picea's roots.

  

Working in from the perimeter toward the trunk.

Don lifts the tree out of the hole.

Transporting the tree to its new home across campus. The tree has been laid down for stability.

The tree in its new location, with plenty of room for continued growth up and out.

During the whole process we watered the roots every 5 to 10 min.  We wrapped the roots in wet burlap for the transport.  Once we had placed it in its new home, I sprayed the tree with with anti-transpirant and we then staked it, as its new home was a very windy location on the lake.  The stakes and guys will probably be removed this summer once we can confirm that the tree has settled well enough in its new hole.”

Here’s an example of the thoughtful management of plants on a property.  This Dwarf Alberta Spruce was in good shape, but had grown out of its original location, tucked behind the greenhouse.  Moving it was a fine way to save the tree, preserve the antique greenhouse glass adjacent to it, eliminate the greenhouse interior shading problem, and revamp the area — and now the tree, in its new spot, has room to grow and is visible to the Wellesley College community.

Project site:  Wellesley College campus, Wellesley, MA

Project arborists:  Jim Doyle, ISA-Certified Arborist; Don Garrick, MA-Certified Arborist

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A tree is a living organism

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Root-washing, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Another question asked at last week’s New England Grows about bare-root transplanting was “How do you make sure the roots don’t dry out?” The answer, of course, is that you water the tree you’re moving.  You water it thoroughly a couple of days before the transplant, to insure that the tree’s tissues have good turgor pressure and moisture reserves for the bare-rooting.  You take a break every now and again during the blow-out (if you’re using compressed air) and spray down the exposed roots with water.  You may spray more water on the roots — the top, bottom, and inside of the root mass — when you pick the tree up on forks to deliver it to its new home.  You ‘mud in’ the tree as you backfill, saturating the backfill soil with water to eliminate any air pockets and again, to combat root dessication.   And once you have mulched the tree well, you water still more.

Water in all phases of the operation is key to tree transplanting.

Cornell’s Urban Horticulture Institute advocates using a hydrogel slurry to hold water on the bare roots during planting.  Their excellent Creating the Urban Forest:  The Bare-Root Method describes the process of planting young trees bare-root, and is well worth reading.  The challenge of using a slurry for large-tree transplanting would be in getting a consistent coating of hydrogel on the roots (you can’t dip the root plate in a tub, the way you can with a sapling root mass) — but there must be a solution (so to speak) to that problem. And finally, aftercare is critical.  Moving a large specimen tree bare-root takes time and effort, and it would be folly to follow all the steps, get the tree in the ground, and then leave its re-establishment and survival up to chance.  Some arborists add fertilizer and bio-stimulants to the backfill, some don’t.  What is essential, again, is water.  Consistent and adequate water for the first growing season is the best way to make sure that a transplanted tree makes the transition to its new home, survives, and thrives.

Watering in a root-washed pin oak at Cavicchio's Nursery. Photo courtesy of Carl Cathcart.

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A tree is not a carrot

Posted in Air knife, Air spade, Air tool, Air tool transplanting, Arboriculture, Bare-root transplanting, Plant management, Roots, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Thousands of people showed up at New England Grows this past week.  One of the conference’s principal speakers, Bonnie Lee Appleton, unfortunately fell ill and had to cancel her Wednesday talk; for a while the day before the conference it looked as if one of the two convention center ballrooms would be empty for a couple of hours.  At the last minute, NE Grows asked Matt Foti to take Ms. Appleton’s place with a talk on bare-root planting.

The talk was great — packed with information — and sent a steady stream of people to the Foti Tree and Landscaping booth to learn more about bare-root transplanting.  Matt teamed with Teddy and Mike, two of his arborists, to field questions at the booth, which had a good set of air-tool transplant photos, a continually running rough cut of my London Plane video, and two 3-inch caliper Zelkovas from Matt’s nursery. One of the Zelkovas had been dug, balled, and burlapped; the other sat with its bare roots splayed on a sheet of plastic, showing off their extension (they extended about 3-4′ on all sides from the tree trunk), uncut tapers, and web of water-collecting and nutrient-storing capacity.  Every now and again one of the arborists would spray the roots with water.

It was cool to watch visitors to the booth stop and take in what they were seeing.  Some of them shook their heads and moved on; most, though, would watch the video for a few moments, or peer at the photos and the trees and start asking questions.  Matt and Timmy and Mike rarely had a moment in the three days when they weren’t answering questions.

A couple of questions popped up over and over.   Arborists, landscape architects, designers, and contractors all wanted to know how much air-tool transplantation costs.  The answer, based on labor requirements, species, condition, and size of tree, as well as on site conditions, was that bare-rooting a tree for transplant may cost more than digging it with a tree spade, but less than digging it with the more traditional drumlaced B&B method.  Bare-rooting a tree for transplant typically preserves at least 90% of the tree’s roots, though, a claim that cannot be made for the other methods.  The more roots you save, the less transplant stress and the shorter the tree’s reestablishment period — and all other factors being equal, the healthier the tree tends to be after transplant.

The other question, also coming from arborists, landscape architects, designers, and contractors, was about taproots.  How did bare-root transplant affect a taprooted tree?  The answer is that taproots are rarely an issue, at least in this part of the world.  In New England, soils tend to be shallow.  As we know, trees tend to develop their roots in the top 18″ of soil; the larger the tree, the deeper that zone may go, but typically it extends no more than 3 or 4 feet below grade.  Some thick roots do extend vertically down in this zone, but many more run horizontally away from the tree’s trunk.

It’s helpful to keep in mind another factor when thinking about taproots and transplanting trees.  More often than not, a large tree being transplanted was planted out years earlier as a B&B plant, or possibly moved into place with a tree spade.  Both methods would have cut any taproot in the initial planting.  When the end of a root is cut, the tree tends to send shoots out from just above the cut end.  In a vertically oriented root, the new shoots are apt to extend horizontally from the cut end, and feeder roots would similarly extend out horizontally.  The situation may well be different for a tree that has grown from seed in one place, that someone now wants to transplant bare root, but for most landscape trees the taproot issue is moot — whatever taproot may have existed when the tree seed germinated has already been cut, and the tree has adjusted for its loss.

A carrot grows downward, with rootlets out to the side and foliage above ground. A tree is not a carrot. Photo by obenson in Flickr.

This beech tree was moved last fall, having been transplanted once about 20 years ago. See how the root mass extends far out horizontally, with a relatively shallow depth.

This is one of the thickest roots extending vertically from the beech's trunk. This root was cut in the earlier (20 years previous) transplant; note the resultant root growth just above the cut.

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In memoriam

Posted in Miscellaneous, Plant management, Trees, tagged , , , , , , , on January 25, 2010| 3 Comments »

I was in Maine last week, and planned to stop in Yarmouth on Monday to watch the removal of Herbie, the champion American Elm (Ulmus americana) that had finally become too compromised to stay standing.

For several months,  stories about Herbie and his long-time steward, Yarmouth tree warden Frank Knight (at 101 years old, he is now retired) had been appearing in the news — Knight had cared for Herbie for over 50 years, and had treated the elm in repeated battles with Dutch Elm Disease.  He had succeeded for decades, but in recent years the disease and old age had been catching up, infecting whole limbs and making it necessary to remove large chunks of the tree’s crown.  Last summer, the town’s current tree warden, Debra Hopkins, determined that Herbie should come down, and Knight concurred.   The date of removal was set for January 18.

There were reports that arborists and Herbie-fans from around New England would show up to watch the proceedings.  As I would be driving past Yarmouth that day, I decided to join them.  Work was slated to begin at 7:30 a.m.

Fortunately or not, a heavy snowstorm started on Sunday night, and when I awoke at 5 on Monday morning several inches had already fallen, with no end in sight.   A couple of tasks delayed my departure by several hours, and as it seemed unlikely that the work would proceed that day anyway, I didn’t arrive in Yarmouth until about 2:30 p.m.  Herbie still stood.  As I drove up, several people were snapping photos of the tree; more showed up when they left, and still more arrived as I was leaving.  Lots of people wanted to get a last look at this giant.

Herbie the American Elm, on the day scheduled for his removal.

Herbie was massive — in his prime, he stood 110′ tall, with a crown spread of 120′ and a girth of 20′.  Disease and age had diminished him, and it was clear that this was a tree under serious stress, but it was impossible to stand next to or near him without feeling awe.

To get a sense of the tree's scale, note the people standing to the left of Herbie.

Someone had tied a red, white, and blue ribbon around the tree, and people had attached cards and well wishes and information on this champion to it.

The placard in the middle is an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, with facts on Herbie's size and life.

The tree had quite a lot of evidently viable growth in the canopy, but the canopy itself had been hugely compromised, with several very large limbs removed.  I remember hearing Alex Shigo talk about how and when to make the decision to remove a tree; he spoke eloquently about the native dignity of trees, and about how at some point the act of removal shows more respect for the tree than leaving it in place.

There comes a point in a tree's life where removal of this much of its crown is a removal of dignity, as well. Though the tree's trunk appeared to be sound, and the limb removals had eliminated hazard wood, Herbie's time had come.

For about 15 minutes, I ran around in the cold photographing Herbie from different angles.  As I did, I saw carloads of people arrive, jump out, snap photos of themselves with the tree, put a hand out to feel its bark, and then gaze up at it reverently before they left.  And then I went over, put my hand on the craggy, lichen-speckled bark, and also said a silent goodbye.

Herbie in his heyday. This was a classic American elm.

Herbie was taken down the following day, with Frank Knight in attendance.  To see removal photos and videos, as well as how the wood from this elm will be used, click on this link.

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Winter moth heads up

Posted in Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , on December 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Hartney Greymont of Needham, MA has the most effective reminder this year to schedule winter moth treatments.  In November they sent out color postcards showing a single winter moth, about 6 times life-sized.  On the back the cards explain that the brown moths visible in November are parents of the caterpillars that will feed on trees in spring.

Hartney has hit upon a great way to connect a very visible autumn phenomenon with a very visible spring phenomenon, wrapping up a bit of client education with a pitch to schedule spring treatments early.  Nice.

Winter moth, taken from Flickr

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