This could be a love post because damn doesn’t driving down Connaught or Jubilee or any of the south-end treed lined street on a spring day move me to tears with their beautiful canopy of leaves, but love posts arenÂ’t read, so I’m turning this into a negative with a big shout out to the official tree-planting people of HRM to tell to stop planting trees if you’re not going to look after them and yeah, I know youÂ’ve got some kind of plan, some mandate to stick a certain number of trees in the ground whenever there’s new development or road changes regardless of whether thereÂ’s any soil, but tight root balls stuck in rocky dirt donÂ’t do well even in our wettish climate, so do what other cities do, and water them for the first 2 years following planting, maybe a little food too, let them develop a healthy root structure, and then theyÂ’ll be self-sufficient and beautiful and someday make our newer neighbourhoods almost as lovely as the peninsula (except for the cookie-cutter designs, but IÂ’ll save that rant for another day) and if you donÂ’t agree with me, just drive down Lacewood from Dunbrack to Bayers Lake and see the pitiful trees with plentiful bare branches that have nothing but superficial roots and have hardly grown more than a few feet despite some of them being in the ground for more than a decade and I know youÂ’ll keep replacing the “dead” ones with new ones that will only die off again without water, without soil sucking up more tax dollars and yes, I saw them the day they went in and they were healthy and beautiful and yes, theyÂ’re actually supposed to have leaves on all their branches; and yes, itÂ’s simply your negligence thatÂ’s ruining em.
—forestgreen
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2009.
Periods are your friend.
This is a fucking run on sentence from hell. Forestgreen, take some Nyquil and hit the sack.
Hey forestgreen,
I see this all the time. I’m sure the city would save trees and money by asking people to volunteer to take care of the trees. I know I would love to help!
Tim, I usually think your quips are cute but you’re being a twat here. Trees the caliper planted by HRM are expensive. Add the labour and machinery costs to have them put in place and you have a fairly substantial investment of tax dollars. Further, trees only help cool the city and remove CO2 from the air if they have a full canopy, not sickly branches with the odd, malformed leaf.
My only complaint is the OP crit us with a wall o’ text. Paragraphs and punctuation, people; even badly done is better than none at all.
Sorry Tim, guess punctuation was your point. I shouldn’t type before coffee.
Darn, I wish I had gone the punctuation route because I really did want people to read this. For me, however, rants are more fun to write when there’s little punctuation and long sentences. It seems to highlight the anger and breathlessness of the writer, no? I guess on the Internet, though, it just appears to be another contributor too lazy to make an effort. My bad.
On second thought, I should get some credit for hyphenating my compound adjectives.
My thumb is far from green, but you would think with all the rain we have been getting, lack of watering is the problem.
isn’t the problem, whoops.
“My thumb is far from green, but you would think with all the rain we have been getting, lack of watering isn’t the problem.”
I’m sure most people would agree with you – your agrument certainly sounds logical – but I don’t agree just the same. I agree that watering isn’t necessary if the tree starts from a seed/seedling. (The trees in N.S. can grow on rocks with nothing but a crack of soil because of all the rain.) But, if a mature tree is planted then it needs a good soak once a week for the first 2 years. Rain doesn’t necessarily soak in deep. A shallow watering/rain encourages shallow roots and the tree doesn’t do well in any kind of short-term drought. Most of the trees planted in HRM aren’t even watered the day they are planted, which is often in July/August, followed by a few weeks of relatively dry weather. Most planted treees that get unintentionally watered because people have set up sprinklers on their lawns are in excellent shape.
Vancouver is known for its high rate of rainfall. They do, however, water their newly planted trees.
I think HRM is wasting money planting trees without any kind of follow-up plan. I’m sure the actual cost is enormous. I’d love to see healthy trees all over the city, but the half-dead leafless ones are pointless.
Your comment about a tree in nova scotia being able to grow in a crack of soil is very contradictory in the sense that you want big beautiful trees. Trees that don’t have enough soil, such as the ones you describe don’t live very long and look shitty their entire life.
I also find it hard to believe that HRM would plant in July/August as May and June are traditionally planting seasons. A few buddies of mine are finishing up this week with their season.
And if you are so concerned with HRM wasting all their money on this, why don’t you start a group of volunteers who go out in their communities and water trees, or contact the EAC instead of preaching to a bunch of bored people at work on this site.
There’s no contradiction; you just didn’t read or understand my meaning. No matter. Trees that grow from a seed in a crack of soil on a rock can live for hundreds of years; they have a well-established root system from day 1, unlike planted trees stuck in the ground by some expensive and senseless tree-planting mandate.
“I also find it hard to believe that HRM would plant in July/August as May and June are traditionally planting seasons. A few buddies of mine are finishing up this week with their season.”
I’ve seen it; you haven’t. I’ve also seen them plant in Sept, Oct, Nov.
“And if you are so concerned with HRM wasting all their money on this, why don’t you start a group of volunteers who go out in their communities and water trees, or contact the EAC instead of preaching to a bunch of bored people at work on this site.”
Cause, like I said, the trees need a good soaking. A watering can won’t cut it. How am I going to water hundreds of trees lining Lacewood? Other cities do this with a watering truck.
And you bored people at work always have the option of not reading what I write. I won’t know the difference.
I’m all for trees, forestgreen. We could do a hell of a lot better here– there are 0 dollars in the street tree fund for this year’s city budget. (The tree planting you see comes out of new street funds, or is paid for out of councillors discretionary funds, neither of which really addresses the long-term implications of not replacing trees.)
In the end, trees end up saving us money. They’re good things.
It would be nice if the city could make this kind of thing a priority. Visitors and residents alike are wowed by the downtown core with the giant trees. It’s a unique and special feel. Let’s make the whole city like this.
Oh, and don’t get me started on the concrete walls that sort of look like rock…
I agree with this dead-tree concern. But you know what really gets my goat? When new trees are planted with those guy-wires (whatever they’re called) to add support to the trunks, and then years later, the tree has grown around the supports because no one has bothered to take them off. I feel so sorry for the trees. When I was a teenager, I would carry wire cutters to liberate the poor things! (I know, totally hippy-tree-hugger, but I couldn’t help it!)
That’s great! 🙂
(That issue bothers me too!)
I’ve always wanted to prune the little shoots at the base of the tree. I’ve heard the tree does better over all if these are pruned.
Perfectly true. The roots send all the good stuff up to the canopy of the tree instead of spilting it with the suckers.