What trees need us to know

Last week at New England Grows, while Toby was manning the table for the Ecological Landscape Alliance (its shiny new name hasn’t made it onto the website yet, but the ELA is an outstanding organization, and so is their material), he struck up a conversation with Jeff Ott, owner of Northeast Shade Tree in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jeff told him about a workshop he’ll be giving on March 6 for landscape professionals; it’s called “Tree School for Landscapers; The Built Landscape From An Arborist’s Perspective”.

The Old Elm on Boston Common, 1876
Courtesy Boston Public Library via Flickr; Creative Commons License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en

Jeff, who has been an arborist for the last 36 years, had the great good fortune to work with Alex Shigo — probably the most influential tree researcher of the 20th century. Recognizing that more intellectual cross-pollination between arborists and other landscape professionals would benefit the landscapes on which we all work, Jeff decided to put together this workshop. The timing is good, before the spring planting and construction season gets rolling, so I’m aiming to go, and hope that other landscape architects will seize the opportunity as well.

Here’s the Tree School announcement.  Don’t be alarmed about the absence of an address:  you send your registration form and check ($75) to:

166 Clinton Street, Portsmouth, NH  03801

And here’s the Tree School Agenda, which outlines what will be happening through the day.  Contact Jeff if you have further questions; he can be reached at jottphc@gmail.com, or by phone at 603-463-7512.

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And unlevelled places become a plain

In my work doing residential landscape architecture, I have encountered a number of instances where someone has bought a house on a sloping piece of land, getting what seems to be a steal. Usually, the buyer/client first tackles work on the house, revising its interior, and sometimes its exterior, to make it just as he/she wants it to be. House modifications can take years. When the house update is done, the homeowner turns his/her attention to the landscape. Most people want as much usable outdoor space as possible: a patio is a pleasant place to sit, a big, level lawn lets kids play comfortably and within sight, and walking, driving, swimming, or playing sports are all easier on flat surfaces. And it’s when the owner of a sloping site wants to enlarge their usable domain that it becomes clear why the dream house was such a bargain.

Why? Because slopes are expensive to unslope.

For people to use the land immediately around their house with any degree of comfort, it’s necessary to make level areas. A patio typically has a cross-pitch or slope of not more than 2% (just enough to drain water), and a lawn that slopes no more than 5 or 6 percent is best for active kids to organize and play games on. When a house is built on really noticeably sloping ground, the grade can measure anywhere from 8 to 15 percent, or more.

Sometimes earthen banks can hold up a level area; sometimes strategically placed boulders can do the job; often large retaining walls are necessary. Where surface area is scant, retaining walls may be the most efficient way to hold land level. Walls tend to be costly.

To start from a different point: A couple of years ago, I had the good fortune to visit a friend in Konstanz, Germany. While there, we took a number of side trips into Switzerland. We punctuated our train trip to Appenzell, Switzerland (home of many cows and of Appenzeller cheese, a famously stinky but delicious local specialty) with a visit to St. Gallen, home of a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Library of the Abbey of St. Gall.

St. Gallen, Switzerland, from the air. The medieval walled city core is clearly visible among the more regular fabric of later-built streets and buildings. The Abbey and its World Heritage Site Bibliothek can be seen at about four o'clock in the walled part of the city.

The Bibliotek (Library) was closed when we arrived. We were ready to take a rest anyway, so found a spot on the spacious and sunny courtyard lawn and got out a picnic lunch. The day was bright and only slightly cool; though cars puttered by outside the court and a bell nearby clanged the hour and several other people sat on the grass and on nearby benches, the courtyard felt extraordinarily tranquil and pleasant. We munched and chatted, and I tried to put my finger on what made the courtyard feel so different from the surrounding area.

Look closer at the Abbey and its grounds. It takes up a large area within the walled city, and though the surrounding land slopes to the northwest, (that is, toward the photo's top left corner), the huge Abbey courtyard is almost perfectly level.

I had been thinking about the slope/cost issue for a quite some time, and it sprang to mind again in that peaceful abbey close. From the railroad station in the valley bottom, we had climbed winding medieval city streets to get to the Abbey; the walled city around the Abbey sat considerably higher than the station itself. Outside the three-sided Abbey complex, streets bent and sloped against the thick walls of the Roman Catholic enclave. Inside, green grass carpeted an utterly level quadrangle, muffling sound and lying like a tablecloth on a tabletop

Outside the Abbey walls is an orderly but dense fabric of masonry buildings and narrow streets that wind up and down the hilly terrain. Inside the Abbey walls, the utterly level and open ground of this tranquil courtyard puts on display the power and wealth of the Church that built it. Photo by kind courtesy of Galen Frysinger, at http://www.galenfrysinger.com/

In this Swiss city, slope is a fact of life. Buildings themselves do double duty as retaining walls; the back door of a house here can easily be situated a full floor above the front door. The city fabric is tightly woven, to conserve energy and again, because amending long sloping frontages can be expensive. Most homes are built cheek by jowl, with little or no space between houses.

The Church was and is a wealthy and powerful homeowner/landowner, as evidenced by its leveling of a sizable piece of the town’s steep foothill to make a vast piece usable ground. The fact that the courtyard lies in the middle of this densely woven city, and that it is given over to luxurious lawn sends a quiet but clear message of power and wealth. While the elegant and extremely solid buildings convey that message, the carving out of level outdoor space speaks just as definitively about the ability of this particular institution to make unlevelled places plain.

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Root work

Contractors, arborists, and landscape architects in Massachusetts would do well to check out the Ecological Landscaping Association’s September events list.  The ELA is offering a number of really good workshops, on topics ranging from Boston-area restoration projects to the use of fire in landscape management, as well as a two-part, two-day workshop on root issues.  

One day of the root work will focus on soils(f you’ve read any of this blog, or Taking Place In The Trees, you’ll know that I’m interested in roots.)  In the air tool workshop, entitled At The Root: Air Tools Workshop, Rolf Briggs and Matt Foti will be talking about using air to work in the root zone, to decompact soils, to transplant trees and shrubs and also about how to plant nursery-grown stock properly.  

Matt and Rolf have done a similar workshop for the Mass. Arborists Association in the past, and Matt holds an annual workshop on proper planting techniques.  Being able to see what a root system looks like is eye-opening.  Learning — not just from written specs or a generic tree-planting detail — how a tree or shrub should be planted is essential, and well worth the price of admission.  I have been to at least three of these workshops, and learn something new at each one, and so can say that this workshop is one every landscape architect who designs plantings, and every contractor who sells plantings should attend.

Michael waters in a hemlock whose root flare has been excavated with air.

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Thriving live hemlock

That last post made a good point — sometimes the leftovers in a landscape can be used as a feature in and of itself — but I much prefer the photo here. This hemlock is very much alive, and lives outside of Boston on private property. Carl Cathcart, Consulting Arborist, took me to see this wonderful tree last July, and you can see more photos of and information on the tree at Taking Place in the Trees.

To get an idea of the scale of this tree, look just to the right of the tree's center; Carl Cathcart is standing on the ground under the tree's canopy, and his legs are just visible.

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Boston hemlock

The other day I was on Beacon Hill and spotted this mostly dead hemlock tree, completely swathed in Boston ivy:

Though this hemlock tree on Beacon Hill is dead, its stripped-down structure maintains usefulness, as Boston ivy covers it entirely with foliage.

Perhaps the owners were simply neglecting their courtyard garden, but I like to think that they saw the mature tree’s size as an asset to the place, and decided to use the deadwood as an armature for another plant, and to use the resulting ‘hybrid’ as a garden element.

I have seen this strategy used with other trees; an ancient, mostly dead apple through which a vigorous rose climbs and blooms, tiny dead crabapple that hosts a clematis vine, and a couple of thriving Norway maples through whose canopies wind equally thriving wisteria vines.

We see bittersweet and poison ivy taking advantage of the height and sun exposure offered by trees; why not use that principle and foster the growth of ornamental vines over dead trees, or, as in the case of the Norway maples and wisteria, let one aggressive species provide a platform for another aggressive species?

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Dappled willow

About ten years ago, I noticed a mild fad rev up in the gardening world; all the garden centers around here started carrying Salix integra ‘Hakuro Nishiki’, usually trained into standard form with a 3-4′ high stem and a pompom of foliage at top. Hakuro Nishiki, also known as Dappled Willow, is a fast-growing, twiggy large shrub/small tree with variegated white and light green to pink leaves, and it lights up a garden with its foliage, which is profuse and almost aggressively healthy-looking.

I’m fond of these plants, though they certainly need to be placed with care. They like full sun, but can deal with some shade. Because they grow so vigorously, it’s a good idea to commit to pruning them every year or so, to keep them in bounds. Actually, I can see how sculpting them in various ways each year might be an interesting exercise — not something you’d want to do with most plants, but this one seems malleable enough to allow some experimentation.

I have written earlier about L. and A., my excellent clients on the North Shore, who enjoy developing and fostering their landscape. Several years ago L. bought a Dappled Willow for her perennial garden. It’s not a standard form; instead, she’s keeping it pruned low, to keep it in scale with other elements in the garden. Here’s a photo of it in leaf:

This plant is about thirty inches high and wide, and is kept as a mounded shrub with pruning.

And here’s a photo of how L. prunes it to keep it contained to this form:

Every year L. cuts this Dappled Willow back hard, to keep its vigorous growth contained in a form that works for her perennial garden.

I have wondered what these plants look like unpruned, and last week got to see one. If the willow in L.’s garden looks like a contained explosion, this one looks as if the top blew off the container:

Perhaps the owner of this plant didn't realize what level of attention Hakuro Nishiki was going to require annually.

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My phone applications

Voice.  That’s it.  My phone lets me talk, and listen to someone on the other end; if I’m working, I can plug a headset in or hit the speaker phone button.  And use the ‘Mute’ button if necessary.

I opened Toby’s iPhone app post with reservations, having felt saturated recently with iPhone app ‘articles’ that seem little more than ways for a newspaper or blog to fill space.   (In the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine recently I mistook a piece on phone apps for an advertisement, because it was largely a collection of photos of phones, each one showing a different app, with a weblink below.  It was not poor beleaguered print journalism’s finest hour.)

I’ve been a dedicated voice-only phone user forever.  Low-to-the-ground technology is what I like to use, knowing how easy it is for me to get lured in to a moving display and find myself sidetracked for an hour or four.  And I just got a new phone contract last week, turning down the chance to get a new phone because the one I have works just fine.  So a post about phone apps?  Argh.

But the apps Toby shows are making my dialing finger (so to speak) itch.  It would be hugely helpful to be able to place dimensions directly on a photo in the field.  My field notes tend to be scratchy and blobby, and while I’ve developed a method for keeping straight what numbers go with what dimension line, that dimensioning app holds out the promise of more organized field dimensioning.  So tempting.  And stitching together a bunch of photos a la David Hockney would simplify my reference photo printing, too.  Even the number converter looks inviting, though I keep a handy cheat sheet with me for quick and dirty conversions.

An excerpt from a recent set of field notes.

Still, colored pencil and paper are quick, and while they’re not beautiful they do give me the information I need, in exactly the way they’ll be useful when it’s time to draw a base plan and work out the details.  You can’t beat the price.  So far, the end results  over the last couple of decades have been successful.

Stay tuned.  I’m betting that I’ll stick with a voice-only phone, but if the iPad adds a camera and a UWB port and can use those apps I may turn into a technology maven yet.

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Memorial

Downtown Boston teemed with people this past holiday weekend. Stroller brigades patrolled the streets, the scent of sunscreen wafted through the breeze, and a general air of well-being rested like a pleasantly warm blanket over the city.

Friday, I had walked through Boston Common and seen the simple and remarkable memorial to Massachusetts’ fallen military just installed by the Massachusetts Military Heroes Fund. Yesterday I returned with my camera.

In the distance, something appears to cover the Common's usual green carpet.

Closer, the rug becomes a sea of American flags below the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. Visitors drawn to the sight stop, gaze at the flags, take photos, and chat quietly with others standing nearby. Parents keep their little kids from running into the flag field.

People and cameras are everywhere.

Flags are set between 12 and 18 inches apart, on no discernible grid.

One flag for each fallen military service person from Massachusetts.

A few signs printed on FomeCor and staked into the ground explained the memorial installation.

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Ceci n’est pas un arbre

Or, ‘This is not a tree’.

Thinking again about, and then past the pollen issue, I wonder if humans had such strong allergic reactions in pre-industrial times. In much the same way that we have been using the world’s oceans as a dumping ground for every substance we don’t want to deal with, we have been pumping fine particulates into the atmosphere in ever-increasing quantities since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Maybe pollen's not the real problem. Photo courtesy of The Library Of Congress, via Flickr.

We breathe oxygen. Oxygen shares atmospheric space with pollen and with myriad other particulates; our bodies work to filter out the particulates as we draw in oxygen.

Certainly, pollen poses challenges to the smooth operation of the human body. And planting fewer pollen-abundant trees might help breathing conditions to some extent. But really, now — shouldn’t we also look at the overload of particulates continuously (not only seasonally) streaming into our breathing space from coal-fired power plants, miscellaneous smokestacks, vents, trains, trucks, buses, and cars? And act to place more stringent limits on emissions from all those sources?

Making the natural world the culprit is easy. Calling ourselves to account for the consequences of our much more harmful actions may, as painful as it is, may be the more responsible and fruitful response.

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Pollen’s only part of the story

ZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSSSDDDDchew!! Excuse me; Toby’s photo of the pollinating pine in that last post just makes my nose tickle.

His points about pollinating trees make sense to me; wind-pollinated trees are different in nature from insect-pollinated trees, and have quite different effects on those allergic to fine particulates.

I have to say that Mr. Ogren’s original Op-Ed piece stood out as much for its hypo-allergenic focus as for its assertions about what trees do get planted in cities. To set the record straight, a number of the plants he mentioned (both favorably and unfavorably) — box elder, mulberry, silver maple, willow, cottonwood, and even red maple — are considered either outright weed trees or are simply weak-wooded and would never pass muster for planting in dense urban areas. More often than not, most of these trees volunteer in the city, and are able to thrive because they are wind-pollinated, produce a lot of seed, and are able to grow quickly and under conditions that would stymie less tenacious trees.

Landscape architects and arborists working in cities tend to avoid these plants for street tree plantings; in fact, I would think of using some of them — if any — only on larger sites where space was not an issue, where I wanted fast and effective growth, and where there was no chance that they would invade other areas. Municipal lists of acceptable street trees are actually, quite limited, as the piece points out, and mainly include slower-growing or more structurally sound trees than some of these worst culprits — the criteria for street tree selection in a city have to take into account those trees that have relatively reliable structure and habit, can deal with difficult soil, exposure, and moisture conditions, and that don’t create walking hazards with heavy fruit set.

What struck me most, after reading Mr. Ogren’s piece, was the realization of how much vegetative biomass there is in cities, despite our best efforts to pave wherever possible. The ocean of pollen we swim in every spring and summer comes from volunteer as well as planted trees, shrubs, grasses, and forbs, and reducing the pollen count in any area feels a little bit like setting aside a piece of the ocean to make a freshwater pond…

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