Specifications and details are required elements of the design and construction process – they’re what ensure the proper components get built in the right place and to the right standards. Yet for trees, all too often the details and specifications don’t actually depict conditions that are optimal for growth. ANSI A300 established standard tree planting… More
I meet many people in the landscape architecture community who have heard of i-Tree… but don’t really know what it does. Basically, i-Tree is a suite of tools designed to quantify the structure of a community forest as well as the environmental services provided by that forest. It can be used at a wide range… More
My window looks out on 9 Mile Creek, a rural looking creek in an urban/suburban environment in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. In the six years our company has been here, this is the closest I’ve seen water come to the parking lot. For a number of weeks this spring and summer, the large ash trees on… More
Today’s post is an interview with Ellyn Shea, garden coach, arborist, horticultural educator and researcher, and frequent contributor to this blog. In addition to 15 years of professional and personal gardening, Ellyn was Planting Manager and later director of the Tree Care program at Friends of the Urban Forest, a San Francisco non-profit that promotes… More
Today’s post is an interview with Drew Graham, a Landscape Architectural Intern at Brodie & Associates Landscape Architects in Toronto, ON. As an MLA student at the University of Guelph, Drew studied how heat-related emergency calls were distributed throughout the city. What he found was that areas with low tree canopy cover had significantly higher heat related emergencies… More
You’ve done your site analysis and ensured enough rooting volume for the tree. You spent time carefully selecting the right species and cultivar. You’ve even inspected nursery stock and rejected specimens with uncorrectable root defects. In other words, you tried to do everything right. Yet six months later, the trees don’t look so good. What… More
7 years. 13 years. 15 years. You’ve probably heard all of these figures (and more) applied to the true average lifespan of a street tree. So which one is correct? According to Lara Roman, a Research Ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, the question is more complicated than it first appears. The 7 year figure… More
The other day, I passed a dead street tree in San Francisco Not an uncommon occurrence unfortunately, but this tree had once been on TV. The tree, a Paradox walnut, had been planted along with a second tree next to it as part of an art/science project called OneTrees designed by Natalie Jeremijenko. Jeremijenko cloned… More
As regular readers of this blog know, when I learn about early suspended pavement systems for trees, such as the Christian Science Center in Boston, I like to find out more about them. I recently learned about another one that was installed at the Herberger Theater in Phoenix, AZ in 1989 – now 25 years… More
This was originally published on the landscape architecture blog The Field. When we talk about low-impact development and design today, the term “suspended pavement” comes up a lot, but it occurred to me recently that this term is rarely defined. Here is my attempt to do that by walking through suspended pavement’s history, uses, composition,… More
Very often the “trees” that are added to architectural drawings or envisioned as elements of a new downtown landscape are only part of the structure: the aboveground portion that includes the trunk, the branches, the canopy, and the leaves. While this portion of the tree is usually the only visible part and thus captivates the… More
How do you persuade someone to invest in having healthy, mature trees in their community? For some, the promise of access to nature, wildlife, and all of their tranquil side effects is sufficient reason. For others, the prospect of saving on energy bills and reducing the heat island effect wins them over. Others might be… More
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