CRIMES AGAINST PLANTS: A CONSPIRACY OF IGNORANCE

Professional maintenance gardeners are left holding the bag

Eight years ago I founded PlantAmnesty, a non-profit organization to promote better pruning. As a professional maintenance gardener, I was incensed by the fact that 90 percent of what is called pruning, isn't. It's just cutting.

We currently have over 700 members. We've had some success educating homeowners and professionals in the basics of pruning, although much remains to be done. We've published numerous articles: Trimming or Torture, Poodleballing: Sport of Kings, and Birch Butchery are just a few. We present The Slide Show of Pruning Horrors numerous times annually. As spokesperson for PlantAmnesty, I have been quoted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and featured in an Associated Press article that appeared in forty states. PlantAmnesty has also produced and aired a television public service announcement on tree care. Most recently we printed a postcard featuring the winners of our annual Ugly Yard Contest.

Systemic problems

But homeowners are not the only ones guilty of crimes against plants. Through PlantAmnesty, I have uncovered a tragic shortage of horticultural knowledge. This shortage is underscored by the fact that most people in the landscape maintenance business don't have licenses, and even legal businesses typically lack knowledge of plants. This unfortunate situation is compounded by the fact that homeowners, in their own ignorance, routinely request mal-pruning (e.g. inappropriate shearing and tree topping).

I recently met several students of landscape architecture with the same concern. They had been told by professors that if they wanted to learn about plants they should attend some community college classes. Although these students were local, I heard similar accounts in Denver. I was surprised to hear that there was a certain amount of disdain expressed toward "hort types" by their professors. The results of this educational bias are found everywhere in landscapes: mis-sited trees and shrubs, over-planting, trees dead or dying from insufficient tree protection measures, overused plants, and the use of plants with predictable and chronic pest and disease problems.

By running a crusade to improve maintenance practices, the members of PlantAmnesty -- many of whom are arborists and professional gardeners -- are taking responsibility or the failings of our industry.

It's time to fill in the gaps. I find that the most successful people in any profession are those who have built bridges between disciplines.

Every line drawn on a blueprint has implications for the people who will take care of the landscape. Owners cannot afford to ignore this, and neither can landscape architects.

An award-winning park in downtown Seattle visitors . . . and tortures the maintenance staff on a daily basis. The offset pavers used to make the paths are certainly interesting to look at. But the person who edges it must spend over one hundred hours a year instead of the twenty hours it would take if the paths were straight or gently curved.

And the maintenance personnel must haul the debris out in tarps slung over their backs, carrying it down the stairs, since not even access for a Cushman scooter was incorporated into the design. All equipment, plants, garbage, tools, and debris must be hauled in and out by hand, up and down the stairs.

An obvious cure for maintenance-related design flaws -- and the expense and inconvenience that results -- would be to require design students to do at least one summer's internship on a maintenance crew. If you have ever had to bucket twenty yards of mulch into a landscape because it had no wheelbarrow access, it will never be left out of one of your designs.

Systematic torture

Much is being done to prolong the lives of trees. For example, shared planting strips and interlocking pavers allow for the passage of water to the root zone. New soil mixes are being tried that provide for deeper root penetration (so that the roots will not lift the concrete), but which also allow the contractors the compaction they require. New drainage and aeration systems are also being tested. A good book cataloging the latest research on roots in urban soils is The Landscape Below Ground, available through The International Society of Arboriculture.

More intriguing yet are the techniques being developed to retain native trees on construction sites, the new system for hazard tree evaluation, and improved tree protection measures.

Many tree preservation attempts at construction sites are insufficient and unreasonable -- for developers and trees. Simply putting a yellow ribbon around trees over six inches in diameter and protecting the trunk won't do the trick.

A case in point: I got a call recently from a woman who said, "There's a crazy man in my condo complex who is saying that all the big, old fir trees are dangerous and need to come down. We bought this place because of the trees!"

I assured her that just because the trees were old and large they were not necessarily dangerous -- and gave her the name of a qualified arborist for a hazard tree evaluation.

As it turned out, all of the trees were dangerous and had to be taken out with cranes, at great expense to the owners. The developer had destroyed the root systems during construction. As the saying goes, "They kept the trees, but didn't save them."

It commonly takes five to seven years for trees injured during construction to die from the damage. By that time the developer, the landscape architect, and the ill-informed tree preservationist or city planner are long gone.

By the way, the woman who called bitterly blamed the consulting arborist for the loss of her trees.

There is better news from Maryland, where developers, architects, and arborists are working in harmony to keep the woodland character of new developments. Crucial to such plans are the on-site evaluations by the consulting arborist before any plans are developed.

The buildings are planned around natural features. A "tree stand delineation" is done to identify the trees both worthy and capable of being saved -- groups of trees, healthy trees, trees of mixed age, and younger, more adaptable trees.

Next, the critical root zones are determined and construction boundaries established. Protecting mature trees' roots to the drip line is often not enough. Utilities are stacked, saving countless tree roots from being severed. If construction must occur within the critical root zones, special techniques are employed to preserve the trees. Heavy layers of mulch are used to minimize compaction, tunnels are dug under roots for utilities, and when root pruning is inevitable, it is done with a saw, not a dozer blade. Most importantly, there is consistency and communication between the planners, contractors, and workers from the very beginning to the very end of the development process.

Wholistic medicine

The best news of all may be that many landscape architecture firms are turning from "cookbook" solutions to tree problems and putting qualified arborists on staff or at least on retainer.

The most essential mission of PlantAmnesty is to break up the preconceived notion held by the public that they already know everything they need to know about trees. Unfortunately, this notion is likewise expressed by many landscape architects -- and it is simply not true. The field of arboriculture is rapidly growing and changing. Trees and the people who know about them (members of the International Society of Arboriculture or the American Society of Consulting Arborists) are an underused resource within the Green Industry.

We in the Green Industry have a lot to learn from each other. We should resolve to make a real effort to share the expertise in our respective fields -- disseminating information through trade journals, swapping speakers at our conferences, sponsoring joint conferences, and maybe, even, by talking to each other in the landscape.

Cass Turnbull is a professional maintenance gardener and founder and CEO of PlantAmnesty.

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