Last we checked, the trees in suspended pavement at the Bartlett Tree Lab were doing awesome at 5.5 years. Growing season 6 photos are in and they still look great!

(Structural Soil twig on the left, Suspended Pavement twig on the right).

As a reminder, this independent study was set up at Bartlett by E. Thomas Smiley, PhD, to test how well trees fare in different growing media. To that end, the trees are monitored and tracked from year to year to measure their leaf extensions, height, DBH, and more.

Side-by-side, you can see how different the trees in the Suspended Pavement and Structural Soil treatments look.

The tree is structural soil treatment is on the left; the tree in suspended paving treatment is on the right. These photos were taken at the same distance away from the tree.

This year’s close up tree photos are courtesy of James Urban, FASLA, and the chart and overall plot photos are courtesy of Tom Smiley. Thanks, Tom & Jim!