Growers take an interest in steering landscapers and end users to the right tree for the location

No tree can grow best in the wrong place, and no location can be enhanced by the wrong tree.

To that end, the flow of information between tree growers, and experts in the markets they serve, is critical for the success of both.

J. Frank Schmidt and Son Co. (JFS) personnel take a few days off from their normal duties every year, so they can travel to the annual conference of the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) and talk trees. They’ve done this since 1995, and it was a deliberate commitment the company made.

“We believe it is really important, and in our best interest, to educate landscape architects about trees and to position ourselves as tree experts,” said Nancy Buley, director of communications for the company.

Buley noted that JFS, which regularly is joined by its top customers in the region where the conference is held, is the only nursery that annually attends the national event.

But according to sources for this story, the larger function of educating landscape architects and others about trees is not unusual in the industry. And many believe it is a vital function in helping municipalities, homeowners and others avoid mistakes in tree selection that they pay for later.

Mistakes common

At issue, Buley said, is the fact that most landscape architects aren’t tree experts, and helping steer them to the right tree is an important function of a nursery.

“They have so many hardscape and design aspects to consider,” Buley said. “I learned after a while that we shouldn’t expect them to know a lot about trees. Many do, but in general, trees are not their focus. So, we have just made ourselves available as a source of tree information, as well as trees.”

Carol Mayer-Reed of the Portland, Oregon landscape architecture firm Mayer/Reed, said mistakes in tree selection are not uncommon. For example, municipalities and homeowners often don’t take into account the space needs of trees at full maturity.

“A lot of times, people don’t judge the space that a tree will take up,” she said. “They put them in when they are small, not thinking ahead to the proximity of the canopy to a building, or in the root zone of a street or a sidewalk.”

Barborinas agreed: “I could drive you around any town and show you trees that are being stunted because they simply ran out of root space, either hit a hardpan or a curb or some other infrastructure,” he said. “And when that happens, a tree’s natural tendency is to try and find some way to grow, and in that effort, it starts to crack sidewalks and curbs, get into plumbing and cause other issues.”

Overhead wires also are a consistent problem with misplaced trees, Mayer-Reed said. “It is a big problem when people aren’t considering the utilities that are above the canopies, and as the tree grows, the utility companies will come in and cut out the canopy around the exposed electric lines, and that is unsightly and really unhealthy for the trees,” she said.

“I’ve seen trees, potentially large trees like Autumn Blaze^® maple (Acer × freemanii ‘Jeffersred’), getting planted under a power line, which is insane, because it is going to significantly outgrow that space,” Barborinas said.

Buley noted that years ago, JFS put together a list of trees that are suitable for planting under or near utility lines. Called UtiliTrees^™, the product line includes trees that don’t get too wide or too tall and are adaptable and tough enough to grow in an urban setting.

“We developed this nearly 30 years ago,” she said, “and it is still being widely used, especially since we secured the UtiliTrees.com domain name. It has been a really useful list over the years.”

Diversity important

Proper tree selection also involves selecting a diversity of trees, according to Barborinas. This is not only for aesthetic reasons, but to avoid widespread tree loss in the event one species fails.

“For the longest time, we saw landscape plans with just red maples, green ash, red oaks and a dogwood,” he said. “It was always those, and there are so many more varieties and cultivars that are available.”

Michael Brunk, urban and community forest program administrator for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, is a long-time proponent of the “right-tree, right-place” concept. He agreed that a lack of diversity is still prominent in the U.S.

“We are seeing a lack of tree diversity in urban forests across the country,” he said, “and it is causing communities and the urban forest to take a big hit through various invasive and exotic disease vectors. The Dutch elm disease was a big lesson in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s that wiped out a monoculture of American elms across the nation. And we are going through the same thing again with emerald ash borer and ash trees, and on its heel is maple concerns with the Asian longhorn beetle.”

The beetle already infested trees in Chicago once, he said. “They eradicated it by clear-cutting entire blocks. It was pretty drastic, but it did the job. And now the little booger is back. He is out on the East Coast and heading our way again.”

Brunk, who has led a statewide campaign to improve tree selection in urban forests, said that in some Illinois communities, a third of their urban forest is maples. “So, that is a concern,” he said. “Preferably, we’d like to see more native trees to the Midwest, such as tupelos, the Early Glow buckeye or American hornbeam, colorful trees that aren’t maples.”

Nurseries, he added, are a critical link in both supplying that diversity and educating communities about the need for it.

Barborinas, who in addition to operating a wholesale nursery is a consulting arborist, echoed Brunk’s message, noting that nurseries have a responsibility to produce trees that provide diversity as well as durability in urban settings.

“It is important that those of us in the industry watch the changes and challenges faced by urban foresters and respond to that by coming up with new and better selections for those areas,” Barborinas said.

“We are trying to grow what I consider more bullet-proof trees,” he added. “More trees that first of all are disease and insect resistant and, secondly, ones that fit specific locations and don’t have to be continually pruned back or topped.”

Buley noted that JFS also has invested heavily in diversity over the years.

“In our nursery alone, we’ve more than doubled the number of genera listed in our 1973 catalog — from 17 to about 40 today,” she said. “In that catalog from 50 years ago, we offered 11 species and cultivars, as compared to nearly 500 offered today. Many of the cultivars we offer today were selected as outstanding performers among North American native species and were selected specifically for improved performance in tough urban settings.

“Twenty years ago, genera like Parrotia, Nyssa, Aesculus, Maackia, Heptacodium and their species and cultivarswere rare,” she said. “Today, thanks to an increasing demand for diversity, they’re on their way to becoming mainstream.”

Getting the word out

Barborinas said that in some respects there are limited opportunities for a wholesale tree nursery to provide input on tree selection. “A lot of times, the companies that are buying from us are brokers or cities who already have their locations and tree lists established,” he said. “They are kind of set in their ways and they just order and buy.”

Still, he said, by writing articles for urban forestry publications, speaking at urban forestry conferences and through other efforts, it is possible to bridge that connection and get information to landscape architects and others regarding proper tree selection.

Buley noted that in addition to its UtiliTrees^™ list, JFS has developed a tree locator program to help landscape architects, urban foresters and other specifiers obtain a more diverse palette of trees.

“TreeLocator.com is one of the services we offer to specifiers,” she said. “A city forester in Buffalo or Washington, D.C., or Kansas City can look at our reference guide, see a tree they’d like to specify, and then contact us. We share the names of growers in their area who we sold those liners to.”

“We rely on nurseries both for information and for good nursery stock,” Brunk said. “And tree planting is becoming more and more important, and I think there is a growing demand for tree-planting stock, so we are heavily relying on the nursery industry to provide us the trees.

“I think with the Trillion Tree Act, the demand is going to continue to grow,” he said. “We have a lot of federal dollars coming our way for tree-planting efforts.”

Buley noted that it is hard to quantify the value JFS gets out of its attendance at the ASLA conference. But she believes it is substantial, as is payback from their steady presence at arboriculture and urban forestry events.

“Our outreach has been a green boon to the company,” she said. “It has introduced us to a lot of landscape architects and given me the ability to share a lot of tree information outside the nursery community. I call it cross pollination.”

Mitch Lies is a freelance writer covering agricultural issues based in Salem, Oregon. He can be reached at
[email protected].