As a consulting arborist, I am often called upon to diagnose and help “sick” trees in a landscape. The primary cause of health problems for many of the trees I look at are related to impacts from a landscape renovation or home remodel. Despite best intentions, many bad things can happen to trees during development… More
Our surroundings have the power to shape our emotions, health, and well-being. We can feel this in our bodies – our tensions heighten while driving in city traffic, and relax while walking in a park – and research supports it, too. The lights, sounds, and colors of the environment in which we live and work… More
Soil is not something I spent a lot of time thinking about before starting to work for DeepRoot. But in that time, I’ve come to see and appreciate soil as an almost-magical substance. Soil is foundational to so many things: the biological processes of billions of organisms, carbon sequestration, plant life, and the built environment… More
All across the globe, it has been getting ever hotter with each passing year. With this heat comes serious health risks, including severe heat exhaustion and poor air quality, which disproportionately impact children, those who are ill, and the elderly. Heat-related impacts also disproportionately impact poor and minority communities, which tend to have less access… More
Hey there! “Environmental justice” was a relatively new term for me when I interviewed today’s guest, Shannon Lea Watkins. Shannon is a post-doctoral fellow who studies (in, uh, layman’s terms) how trees influence people and how people influence trees, and she recently published a study that asked an uncomfortable but important question: Is tree planting… More
This summer we surveyed arborists and designers about the issues they encountered buying trees free from uncorrectable root defects. We published the results of that survey on this blog. To review: nursery-grown trees, especially those in containers, can have root defects such as girdling, circling and diving roots which contribute to tree health problems or… More
Trees influence meteorological and climatic effects at all scales of a city, from pocket parks to entire neighborhoods. However, while research has been done on the effect of trees canopies on urban environments in general, we are only now beginning to understand how urban canopies affect climate at all scales of the city – from… More
(We’re bringing you this week’s episode of Remarkable Objects a little early, since Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. We’ll resume a normal publishing schedule next week.) After a decade of working in urban forestry (and editing this blog), I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the biggest challenges trees in cities face. There… More
The will of plants to live in tough urban spaces – and of people to tend them – defies all odds. The space between the curb and the sidewalk is one of the toughest. Author Evelyn J. Hadden calls it the “hellstrip.” Also known as “park strips,” “planting strips,” or sometimes “medians,” these spaces generally… More
There are over 60 parklets in San Francisco, and as far as I can tell, everyone has a favorite. Mine is on Judah Street, way out in the Outer Sunset, almost at the beach. The “seating” is entirely made of a beautiful, gnarled tree trunk laid sideways, creating almost undulating spots for sitting. It doesn’t… More
Why do we have green infrastructure? Is it simply a better way to manage stormwater in our cities – or are do regulatory drivers relating to stormwater discharges encourage its use? What are the impacts of our federal regulatory structure on market demands? All of these questions are related. If you live in a medium-sized… More
Biodiversity in the urban forest is incredibly important to resilience and long-term planning (something we’ve written about extensively, here, here, here, and here, to name just a few). To help designers start thinking about ways to increase diversity, we’re starting a series on some of our favorite species. Many of the species included will be… More
Soil. Stormwater. Sustainable Infrastructure.
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