Tree Wardens

The NY Times has an interesting piece which relates to my problems with the local "tree huggers". Now I am the only registered nursery in my town, I hybridize hemerocallis and have the only registered AHS Display Garden in the state. I have dozens of specimen trees which are rare and unique including a collection, some call it a small forest of Ginkgo and Metasequoia trees in the US. But for maples, ash, and Norway spruce, well you might just as well tear them out. They have surface roots and are weak and destructive and when it blows up a storm down they come.

 As the Times states:

Many New England towns authorize local tree wardens to determine the health of shade trees and ban their removal unless they pose a hazard. 

Springfield has a “significant tree ordinance” under which a homeowner needs a permit to trim or cut down any tree that is more than 36 inches in diameter or more than 75 years old, even if it is on private property, Mr. Casey said. If the tree is structurally unsound, he will issue a permit. But if it is healthy, the homeowner must petition the parks commission before trimming or removing it.  

Utility companies often bear the brunt of complaints during a storm when homeowners lose power, and utilities blame the trees. “Trees are the No. 1 cause of power outages,” said Mike Durand, a spokesman for Nstar, which serves eastern Massachusetts. 

Now the same problem exists in New Jersey. You get some uneducated tree wardens who think ash trees and tulip trees are just wonderful, as are the Norway spruce and maples. They are invasive weeds! They have no worthwhile root structure and given the slightest push fall over destroying homes and killing the foolish who go out in the storm.

 The electric utilities are forbidden to cut the trees and the net result is weeks of power outage and massive loss or property and economic life. Now metasequoia, ginkgo, and even oaks have deep roots and limb structures which for the most part are strong, flexible and not ready to destroy. But do the tree wardens have a clue, not one.

They are ignorant fools who want native plants. Here where we are it was just a few thousand years ago Lake Passaic,  the water hole left over from the Ice Age. The flora is junk, stuff that grew up in the remnants of the detritus left over. I have the distinct disadvantage of both being educated in this area, degrees in Botany and Horticulture, amongst others, and operating a nursery. The bad trees should go! The good ones should come in. Native flora is often not native but just hangers on for a period until better stuff gets here.

Ash, maple, Bartlett Pear and others are just opportunities for destroying homes and power lines. The Tree Wardens should have some modicum of an education and experience. In our town they are often some of the Garden Club ladies who have no other task other to ensure that every dead log is left to cause insurmountable damage!

So before we have another disaster, get rid of the bad trees, trim them, root them out, replace them with the good trees, there are millions of them, not the swamp squatters we have come to "love".