A Better Hour

Two hundred years ago, William Wilberforce, after twenty years of passionate effort, was successful in ending Great Britain’s involvement in the human slave trade. English poet William Cowper described the time as “the better hour” when character and community were joined together (www.thebetterhour.com). To some extent the wounds of slavery remain evident on modern society; indeed, oppressive governments continue to enslave people around the world. Certainly studying the life of William Wilberforce can move contemporary learners to change the world around them for the better, even if by small increments.

In thinking about slavery in the twenty-first century and how Wilberforce poured his life into abolishing human trade, I chased a mental rabbit and began noticing how we have “enslaved” trees and plants in our created environment. People, being the highest order of Creation, are certainly more important than plants in the Grand Scheme. Nevertheless, trees contribute to our quality of life through their well-known attributes of generating oxygen, providing cooling shade in summer and blocking cold winds in winter, damping noise, furnishing fruit and nuts, and softening the view out our windows by somehow adding aesthetic beauty to our surroundings.

I’m not talking here about the arts of bonsai or pollarding or topiary. “Tree slavery” comes in the form of too closely confining large trees with impervious surfaces or by planting trees that “want” to grow large in a space too small for that to be biologically possible. Tree slavery can be the result of ignorance (“Those little oak trees are so cute! Let’s plant a dozen of them out front!”) or is forced on the landowner by government mandate (“The tree/landscape ordinance says you need 52 large trees – find a place for them!”). We have doomed the tree to a suppressed, root-bound life, all the time wondering why it never grew up to its potential.

Tree slavery can destine trees to a forced existence in an unfulfilling location of another kind: large tree under utility lines. Adequate root space may not be the problem but constant pruning to eliminate conflicts will mangle the crown, shorten the tree life span and/or create structural hazards. Right-Tree-In-Right-Place Info


Then there are the instances where offenses against a tree are not so much slavery as negligence. The wounds can remain for the life of the tree, even after it is freed from its bonds. Mower and line trimmer damage, irrigation trenching through roots, and no provision for timely removal of staking materials are all preventable negligent acts against trees.

It’s time for The Better Hour in arboriculture. Granted, by the time an urban forester or arborist gets involved, the crime has already been committed but, here are ten things that we can do to improve the created landscapes around us:

1. Speak up against landscape atrocities, be they slavery or negligence.
2. Discover books and research about proper tree care and learn as much as you can. Pass them on to folks you think might need them.
3. Educate local leaders about abuses against trees and how they can be corrected.
4. Support a local arboretum or community garden that uses trees wisely in their design.
5. If you have arborist skills, put on a workshop for local landscape maintenance workers.
6. Support arboricultural and horticultural research.
7. Tree health is important to community life – let your yard be a shining example.
8. Help to rehabilitate trees by performing free training prunes in a parking lot near you.
9. Found or support a non-profit organization that advocates proper tree planting and maintenance.
10. Pass along your zeal for proper tree care by regularly speaking to community groups. Write a Letter to the Editor exposing tree atrocities and their solutions.

Woes in the Urban Forest

As I trek through our great American cities, my eyes are struck by both the beauty and horror of the created landscape. Showy flowers grace trees destined for death, or at best, decine - like an early funeral. We pay lip services to the importance of trees in the humanscape and, indeed, stick a few in the ground to show we 'care' about the environment. Then we treat them like homeless individuals, barely providing a regular meal, once in a while cleaning up a broken limb, or casting abuses in the name of care and culture.

While the latest fashions adorn our streetscapes, the living objects best equipped to aid in our comfort and enjoyment stand naked, crippled, dead, and dying. They are low-balled, then forgotten. Highly praised, yet relegated to solitary pits.

Passionately protected in the wild, regularly neglected and ignored at home. What could be the magnificent centerpiece of an artist's creation ends up the embarrasing afterthought formed by neglect or uneducated caretakers.

American Forests periodically asks cities about their trees and tree care programs. Last I heard, on average, downtown trees live to the ripe old age of about 13 years while trees in the 'burbs make it into their 30's. Seems that we don't do much to encourage old growth close to home - we'd rather Governement did that somewhere far away.

Our boulevards are either a nursery or a nursing home for trees: new plantings required by new codes next to decrepit century-old relics of a simpler time. The young vital specimens lovingly selected by the designer today may never grow to their potential for lack of proper care. Sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke about public schools, but in reality, it's much worse. To care for children professionally requires background checks, licensing, certification - some proof of competency. Care of trees and landscapes requires, seemingly, nothing more than a pulse, tools, and transportation.

So how do we change any of this? You can train a monkey to do something but you can't educate him as to why it should be done. Education can transfer knowledge, but how do you transfer passion? Stay tuned as I explore these issues and more. I will post the good, the bad, and the internaly rotten.