Quick – name three important types of urban open spaces…public parks, community gardens, umm…roof gardens…how about cemeteries? While making space for the living invariably involves destruction of open space, the space we make for the dead can be a uniquely important part of the urban forest. We owe our historical cemeteries a great deal in… 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
Long-term planning has got to be one of the biggest challenges to the way we conceive of, design, and live in the world – that is also completely essential to our survival. Why is long-term thinking such a hard sell? And is there anything we can do to be better at it? According to a… 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
Browsing through YouTube, I came across this amazing video from 1950 on the topic of water movement in soils.
Soil. Stormwater. Sustainable Infrastructure.
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