Photography by Richard A. Huston
November 2006 | Feature
Standing Tall
It’s about time we give back to our trees. Our conversation with a passionate arborist
By Ritzy Ryciak
They give us the air that we breathe.
They shade us in the summer, offer breathtaking color during dark autumn days and, whether you consciously realize it or not, they comfort.
Now it’s our turn to do something for trees.
These days in Seattle, the tide seems to be turning in the favor of trees. Money appears to be opening up in the city budget. A massive plan for planting new tress and nurturing existing urban trees is in the works.
In September, Seattle’s urban forest made the front page of our newspapers when Mayor Greg Nickels released the draft Urban Forest Management Plan for public comment. His goal for “regreening” the city includes planting 649,000 trees, and maintaining those that we already have.
The hope is to restore the urban canopy by 30 percent in three decades. Nearly half of the proposed new plantings are slated for private property.
That’s good, because in the last 30 years, Seattle has lost more than half of its urban tree canopy. Satellite images of Seattle in 1972 compared with 1996 depict a “green” city turned black. Our city is losing her emerald luster and non-native species like ivy and blackberry bushes are choking out the remaining (but dwindling) native trees.
For the long haul?
One question worth asking is whether the current wave of concern will translate into a long-term commitment.
“Since trees do it for free, they get short shrifted,” admits Cass Turnbull, a certified landscaper, arborist and founder of Plant Amnesty, a private non-profit organization committed to ending “the senseless torture and mutilation of trees and shrubs.”
One push of Plant Amnesty is encouraging better pruning practices.
“If we had to pay for what trees do,” adds Turnbull, “we wouldn’t treat them so poorly.”
Turnbull should know. Since founding Plant Amnesty in 1989, her Seattle-based organization has become the accidental sounding board for sad tree stories and the mistreatment of all things green.
“They think that Plant Amnesty is a tree advocacy group,” she says.
Turnbull started Plant Amnesty with the intention of educating people on “responsible, appropriate pruning and landscape management practices and establishing a standard of quality care for the urban ecology.” She is the author of a handful of gardening books, including “Cass Turnbull’s Guide to Pruning—What, When, Where & How to Prune for a Beautiful Garden.”
“It is a painful world for me as it is,” she says, describing the senseless plant cruelty that motivated her to start Plant Amnesty in the first place. “Now, I get to hear everybody’s story about trees being hurt and killed. I get to hear more, not less.”
Trees reduce city noise, offer habitat to our birds and wildlife, produce oxygen and gulp up toxic carbon dioxide. But trees are unfortunately mute. Aside from rustling leaves and clicking branches, trees do not speak.
This leaves them susceptible to conscious and unconscious mistreatment from people with clippers and overzealous developers.
Local harm
In July, two sets of trees were vandalized in Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods, and the damage will eventually kill the trees. In early July a Magnolia resident used a cherry picker to trim the tops of a stand of evergreens. A few weeks later someone girdled—cut a ring around the circumference of—two cypress trees. Girdling is a slow, agonizing death for trees because nutrients travel through the bark.
When you cut off the nutrient supply the tree slowly starves and dies.
Apparently the trees were in the way of someone’s view. Kill the tree, get the view.
“Yes, and it happens everyday and the city of Seattle does not take it seriously,” says Turnbull, referring to the fight between flesh and leaves (where the leaves lose most of the time).
With a bit of luck, some smart policy choices and a renewed reverence for our towering city trees, things could be changing for the betterTurnbull’s website (www.plantamnesty.org) offers grounded advice on such matters as how to properly care for trees and why topping a tree is so detrimental. She is optimistic about a groundswell of concerned citizens who are working to see that Seattle’s urban forestry gets the attention it deserves. The city’s draft Urban Forest Management Plan is encouraging too.
But Turnbull is skeptical.
“There is talk of making things better,” she says. “We will see. This happened ten years ago.”
She was referring to Seattle’s loss of trees and the call for action.
“This was staggering stuff ten years ago,” she explains.
People, homes, and booming business have encroached, and in the past, trees (the silent types) were always the first to go, or vanish from the budget. But, as carbon neutral becomes the new way to be, trees are viewed as an asset to urban spaces. The presence of trees is proven to boost sales in shopping centers, increase property values and cut energy costs.
Interest is not the same as a commitment, Turnbull argues, and doing right about by the green things in Seattle doesn’t consistently happen.
Turnbull was involved in a tree rally a few years back when the 2005-06 biennial budget proposed by Nickels and approved by the City Council eliminated two of the five positions within the City Arborist’s office. Tree lovers took to the streets (dressed in leaves and branches) to bring awareness to the shortsighted action.
Global air time
Now, global warming is speaking for the trees, and one hopes, the budget makers are listening.
“I don’t want to discourage the mayor and council for their interest in trees,” she says. “There are a lot of people who care about the urban forest, but the government never puts its money and laws were its mouth is.”
Here’s a staggering statistic: One out of seven new trees in the city dies due to insufficient care. Planting 649,000 trees is an ambitious goal, but will we have the framework in place to care for the trees and keep them alive?
“People do not understand that it takes money and laws to care for trees,” says Turnbull. “You have to take care of trees so that they can live and thrive. So many people think that trees don’t need us to grow and do well. They do.”
Ritzy Ryciak writes regular features for Seattle Conscious Choice and contributes to our upfront Green Lines column. She will take over as Editor of SCC next month.
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