Ruthless gardening: Right tree, right place (or, how to avoid tree murder)

[untonuggan]

Sometimes when I am driving with my mom or my partner, one of us issues a string of invectives because we see a pruning job like this:


mature tree with a beautiful canopy except for the giant hole cut out for a power line
(see a full ranty pinterest board by someone else like us!)

Why "tree trimming" doesn't actually prevent power outages (and what will)

The issue with this and other tree mutilations is that they are not a long-term solution. Sure, that power line doesn't have any tree limbs actively resting on it. But that "tree trimming" (*shudder*) is going to weaken the tree. Proper pruning is done not to "remove bits of the tree that are in your way" but to make the tree healthier. Say there are two limbs that are crossing, and if they grow they're going to rub against each other and make a wound that could cause infection. You prune one of those limbs, boom, healthier tree! That is what pruning is for. Ideally, you don't remove more than 1/3 of a tree at a time, and you do it spread out over the tree.

The way that tree is "trimmed" is going to make the tree more prone to disease, as it's sending all its resources to grow more limbs (often tiny unsustainable limbs called water sprouts). It doesn't have enough energy to maintain itself: think being overcaffeinated, undernourished, and stressed out at finals. If there's a big storm, it's more likely to drop limbs or just fall over. On the power line.

Deep breaths.

This is at least slightly more comprehensible than just plain bad pruning like <http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/stopthecrape.html>whatever the hell people keep doing to crape myrtyles for no reason whatsoever. It looks bad. It is bad for the tree. It...why. Whyyyyyyyyyy.

Deep breaths.

How can we prevent these horrible awful no-good pruning jobs and stop the likelihood of my mother crashing the car while ranting about pruning?

I'm so glad you asked! The answer is in something gardeners call "Right tree, right place." Which means for many trees it's kind of too late, because they're already in totally the wrong place. But since Arbor Day is coming and lots of people are in a tree-planting mode, it's a good thing to consider! (Also, if you're in a really hot area, planting before winter can actually be a better time to plant. Just so you know.)

How perfectly nice people can make bad tree choices: story time

To explain right tree, right place, I'm going to tell you about some trees my family has unwittingly planted in the wrong place. One was a very lovely tree in the wrong place, the other was the wrong tree in the right place.

Right tree, wrong place: A Norwegian spruce we got as a Christmas tree, then planted outside. If you look at the wiki entry, you will see that most species have a maximum height of 180 feet and a fast growth rate (up to 3 feet per year). We did not know this, and planted ours in the front yard about 4 feet from the sidewalk. *cough* It was lovely until you had to go sideways to get to the car, and then the neighbors complained, and then the county made us remove it. Or maybe we just did. I don't remember. It was really sad and its name was Lars Bergman, and if we'd planted it somewhere with *enough room to grow* it wouldn't have needed to go anywhere.

Wrong tree, right place: My mom got a Bradford pear and carefully chose a spot that met all its growing requirements (having learned from the Norwegian spruce). She *thought* she was getting the same thing as a Bartlett pear, which is a good tree for our area. Unfortunately, Bradford pears have many problems: they spread and crowd out local trees. They are fast-growing (which, bad in invasives). Also, their limbs are unstable -- partly due to the fast-growing thing -- and prone to "shearing" in storms. My mom debated whether to keep it for a long time til it had a really bad break in a storm, then she took it out.

One tree I want to permaban wish nurseries would stop carrying -- instead of pushing on homeowners whenever they do their landscaping bit -- is a Leyland Cypress. People plant them because they grow quickly and they want instant trees and privacy. Except they can grow *too quickly* and keep growing. We're talking 49 feet in 16 years. They're also cheap, because nurseries can grow them so quickly: Home Depot sells a 3 gal pot (roughly 3 feet) for $37, which is really dirty cheap in tree terms.

In addition to being prone to toppling over -- a Theme with fast growing trees is instability -- Leyland Cypress often cause trouble between human neighbors. Here's one person of many upset about their neighbor's tree. Here's a <https://boingboing.net/2010/09/07/neighbors-angry-abou.html">lawsuit.

Choosing the Right Trees (preferably not for your hell strip)

Where is the hardest place for trees to grow (in my opinion)? Okay, maybe Antarctica. But also the "hell strip" right next to the street. No room for roots = they're going to push the sidewalk up, causing accessbility issues and tripping hazards. But they're exposed to a crap-ton of sun, the power company's "trimming", lots and lots of car exhaust...it's a tough spot.

Lots of cities (probably yours included) have created lists of trees that can survive these types of conditions. So if you're thinking of planting a tree even in your front yard and you live in a busy city, you might consider looking for [your city] + street trees. And don't forget to look at things like maximum height, growth rate, and what type of soil it likes. New York City has a really good street tree page, although obviously New York trees aren't necessarily going to like growing in Houston (hot!) or Seattle (wet!).

tl;dr If this seems like Too Much to Think About, here is a simple guide with pictures and less wall of text about picking the right tree for the right place. And remember, you can always ask a local botanical garden or garden group or internet hive mind for help. I wouldn't necessarily trust a landscaping company as your only source, as their main job is to sell you plants (even if they're not the right plants for you).

If you're thinking, lizcommotion, I don't have room for trees! All of this applies to houseplants or smaller plants as well, just on a less-huge and less-long scale. More on picking houseplants and veggies and things later. But it is good to pay attention to the labels on plants, because if you have a shade-loving plant in the sun, it's going to be a sad sad plant.

P.S. Also, even if you don't have space, you can be like me and come up with a mental list of gorgeous trees you'd plant if you did have the right space. It is a good game.

Comments

[melannen]

I wish this advice worked in my neighborhood. :/ Unfortunately, at the time we bought our house, we had one neighbor, with a large amount of yard between us, and wooded lots everywhere else, so my dad planted a lot of lovely native shade trees in places where they worked well and shaded our yard and house.

Thirty years later, we have seven yards bordering ours and no wooded lots left.

Now, that first neighbor has sold his house and his lot has been subdivided into six (!!! it wasn't that much yard! and it was zoned R3!!!) and one of the people who bought one of the ridiculous topheavy houses built with its wall precisely six feet from the property line has now pruned all of our mature sugar maples in a line straight up along the whole lot because he doesn't want to risk branches landing on his cars.

Meanwhile the subdividers are also getting new power lines brought in that run directly under or through mature trees belonging to other neighbors, which will then of course be butchered by the power company for "being in the way".

What I guess I am saying is, you can't always blame the homeowner for not knowing that somebody would sell thirty years later to a property flipper that would bribe the planning office to rezone as R12. X(

[the_rck]

Our city has a lot of laws about who can do what to which trees. The trees on the strip between the sidewalk and the street can only be pruned and/or removed with city permission, and most houses have at least one tree there. The city also makes property owners pay to keep the sidewalks even; they come through every neighborhood on a five year cycle and mark every square that is unacceptable so that the property owner knows what needs fixing. It was a huge concession from the city when they decided that some trees that were causing sidewalk problems could be removed, but the city decides on a case by case basis.

We have a mostly dead crabapple in our front yard. An arborist told us about ten years ago that it probably should have been yanked five or ten years before that. At this point, all of the limbs have fallen off, so I'm not sure why we haven't gotten rid of the trunk except that it's not threatening anything and that leaving it in place is a lot cheaper. And it still puts out leaves and blossoms and fruit, so it's not actually dead dead.

The trees in our backyard worry me because I don't think that lilacs and roses of Sharon normally get twenty feet tall. Even the forsythia bush is a lot taller than I'd expect it to be. The problem is money and time. Scott thinks he can take care of them, but he always has overtime when the weather's right. Also-- Twenty feet tall is not an amateur gardener thing.

the picture is crowley. I hope he likes the crabapple.

[jadelennox]

I keep wishing one of the microbursts that's denuded our street trees over the last few years would do something about the rassenfrassen Norway Maple -- now a banned invasive! -- in our hell strip. It ain't ours, and we can't take it down, though I've freaking thought about it. There's a process, but the town says until it actively starts poking holes in the basement instead of destroying the sidewalk and my pocket-sized urban greenery, the chances of me succeeding on a tree appeal will never happen.

We also have a japanese red maple I planted too close to the house, but I keep it pruned so we do okay; a crabapple I idiotically planted as a twig from the national arbor day foundation in a raised bed, but it's taller than the house and gorgeous and also the cemetery for all three of my beloved furballs, so we keep it healthy; its sister crabapple in the front yard which has been bonsai'd by the aforementioned Norway Maple the Greatly Loathed, so while both twigs were planted simultaneously the backyard one is higher than the two story house and the front-yard one is literally 2 feet high.

Seriously, that Norway Maple is such an asshole I should call it the Ted Cruz of trees.

Meanwhile an adorable little maple on the other side of the hell strip died, the town dug it up and then kept screwing up replacing it (they brought over a dead tree, looked at the hole, looked at the dead tree, repeat, drove away) so I planted an adolescent Red Oak in the spot which confused them mightily.

[redsixwing]

Ooh, good things to consider.

I am guilty of tree murder* and would like not never do it again, so this is really good information to have in my back pocket.

*small fruit trees; ditch that, unbeknownst to us, periodically floods otherwise dry area for months at a time. Lesson learned.

[altamira16]

Maryland seemed to be extremist in their anti-tree trimming ways.

I live in a new development with a lot of fast growing trees. There are several that try to invade my patio, and I do cut limbs that block the exit from the patio or poke people who are sitting on the bench. Report me to the tree police. I am running with trimmers!

We are going to get snow tomorrow. I am more worried about the snow killing off all the apple blossoms and fruit trees than I am about my bad pruning job.

[cadenzamuse]

I have one good use for a Leyland Cypress near where I live: fastgrowing wind/snowbreaks to divide farming fields. In that case they can be as tall as they want, and the kind of wind and weather that I would be concerned about happens when the field is fallow, so it's not a big deal to haul the thing away. (Although the ads for Leyland Cypresses for Arbor Day are a thing of horror.)

[lilacsigil]

They're very common here in rural Australia, too, but there's a lot of argument about them. They are very effective and fast-growing windbreaks, there's no issue with them impinging on neighbours and they're not particularly fire-prone. On the other hand, native animals (apart from some parrots) can't eat them, nothing grows under them, and people plant them instead of native vegetation.

[raaven]

I LOVE that game!! Mine includes a field of lavender bushes. and bees for lavender honey. :)