TREEAPPreciation blog 8

If you consider a tree to be an asset, why……..?

Why then, are so many trees so badly planted?

The pictures show three photos of trees that were planted no doubt with the vision that they embellish our communities for quite some time…. But the way they were planted has already generously taken off half of their life expectancy. Judging by the pictures, various factors are playing a role. In the first picture one can observe a multitude of roots that seem to have jumped out of the original root ball. The only place for the roots to go: if the plant hole has been too small or the soil surrounding the plant hole too compacted, roots – always taking the road of the least resistance- come to the surface, and find somewhere looser soil to root into. These surface roots gradually become thicker and stronger, and yes, despite everything the tree stem grows as well, causing the surface roots to strangle the stem, resulting ultimately in the tree dying or falling over.

The second picture is an example of blatantly bad planting: the burlap and the strapping are still in place! The soil eroded around the top of the root ball, exposing the original roots that were in the root ball when the tree was planted. The size of these roots show, by the way, that the tree in question has been quite some time in a field and the mature roots were cut relatively close to the stem, with as result that the original root ball lacked and most likely still lacks many of the fibrous roots that are essential for the water intake. The future of this tree does not look bright.

And then the third picture shows a tree that did its utmost best to grow, but the burlap was not removed neither the nylon wrapping string. The tree base is all deformed: twisted and constricted.

It is sad to say that where trees may have been planted with long term expectations that it will be a short lived pleasure of shade, general embellishment, flowers, fruits… in short a better micro climate.

Trees are more important than ever in our world today. Worldwide deforestation in Asia, Africa and the Amazon have their current impact upon the land. But also this country is still grappling with the aftermath of the disappearance of the Great Forests.  Even on our local scale, we have lost far more trees than we plant back.  Heavy storms always seem to take down more trees and after these storms there is an upsurge of panic removal of large trees, often pretty healthy trees. All of these incidents slowly but surely paving the way to a desert like environment.

Schools seem to restrict in their curriculum more and more time spent to the environment, tree and plant raising, according to a dedicated teacher I spoke with not so long ago.

If we do not teach the younger generation how to plant and care for trees, we will not be able to reverse the trend of losing more trees in our environment. Raising tree awareness through Arbor day events alone is not enough…..

Frank Buddingh'

www.buddinghtree.com