This article tells the story in words and pictures about the evolution of a sidewalk on a single block in San Francisco. The 20th Street Biophilic Landscape is on 20th Street between Alabama and Florida Streets. This block is a flat area that was on the edge of or part of a tidal marsh. In… More
Trees and Design Action Group (TDAG) is an not-for profit, open collaborative facilitating cross-sector and cross-disciplinary dialogue and projects promoting the role of the urban forest throughout the United Kingdom. I am the convenor of the group. We share the collective vision that the location of trees, and all the benefits they bring, can be… More
Urban environments depend on maintenance. In intensely used urban settings, the concept of low maintenance is not a practical reality. During the design process, landscape architects must identify the source and capability of that maintenance, and be sure that the maintenance team is informed of specialized requirements and system designs to support the success of… More
Last year, Jim Urban wrote a post for this blog entitled Against Mulch. The principle reasons he cited for his position were: 1) Mulch floats and can clog drains and releases “lots of phosphorus” as it breaks down, and 2) work by Gilman et al. that suggest that mulch does not reduce evapo-transpiration. We discussed… More
While on a recent visit to northern California, I had the opportunity to interview an energetic young woman who is at the forefront of a pioneering effort to educate fellow arborists on wildlife protection. Megan Morris is a Sacramento native who, after earning a degree in biological aspects of conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,… More
We love trees. We also love woodies. For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you will know that we promote large volumes of non-compacted, biologically active loam as essential for street tree health and longevity. There are other plants which require soil volume and need attention as well. Vines,… More
How do the stormwater benefits of Silva Cell suspended pavement tree/soil systems compare to the stormwater benefits of traditional bioretention systems? Since the mechanisms by which the tree and soil provide the stormwater benefits in these systems are the same as those in traditional bioretention, we expected the benefits to be comparable as well. The… More
There is a lot of misinformation in the landscape architecture community about whether or not trees roots will grow in gravels, structural stone soils, and clear stone. Our experience indicates that roots will adventitiously grow in any medium given the right set of circumstances. Quantifying and predicting what set of circumstances produce that growth response… More
For the last two weeks in December I’m be re-posting some of my favorite blog posts from this year. Today’s shares some of the most exciting news we got in 2013, when the Washington State Department of Ecology recognized the Silva Cell as being functionally equivalent to a rain garden. Scroll all the way to the… More
For the last two weeks in December I’m re-posting some of my favorite blog posts from this year. Today’s, by James Urban, perfectly captures what we need to do in order to create healthier urban environments for trees and soils. It’s simple. Touch trees. – LM Alex Shigo, one of the most famous plant biologists and… More
For the last two weeks in December I’ll be re-posting some of my favorite blog posts from this year. Today’s post is by Dr. Bert Cregg, Associate Professor in the Department of Horticulture and Department of Forestry at Michigan State University. It was originally published on The Garden Professors and is reprinted with the author’s permission. -LM We’ve… More
Many factors affect tree health. Are they all equally important or are some more important than others? According to Kim Coder, soil compaction is by far the biggest constraint on tree growth. In a 2007 paper, he wrote, “Soil compaction is the most prevalent of all soil constraints on shade and street tree growth…Many people… More
Soil. Stormwater. Sustainable Infrastructure.
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