City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/41336
essential. Although general contractors realize the significance of tree protection during construction, the message gets lost in translation when hundreds of subcontractors arrive on site. Preservation zones have to be constantly defended. Also, on construction sites water is a valuable commodity. It is critical to have a dedicated tamper-resistant, tree-specific water supply and an irrigation regime. This cannot be left up to a contractor's whim. We got a little creative with our staging timelines. In one situation we pulled the trees from a building and kept them in a temporary holding yard while the building was razed and a new one was built. When the new building was completed, the trees were set back into place. The paint in the building was barely dry, yet it had 80-year- old trees adorning its entrances. In another instance trees slated to be removed from a football stadium expansion project were stored offsite for two years while another project across campus was completed and awaited their arrival. I will never forget the first tree I ever saw leave the ground. I was immediately overwhelmed with a sense of vertigo and a deep appreciation for what we were accomplishing. Did my education deceive me? Trees are not supposed to fly. Establishing the new GPS coordinates in our tree inventory was also surreal. Ultimately whether you consider these acts preservation or not, relocating these trees over the years validated our efforts as an organization that truly cared for its trees and would go to any means to preserve them. —Larry Maginnis, Urban Forestry Supervisor, City of Portland, Oregon-Parks and Recreation As with any task performed while managing urban trees at the municipal level, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, politics plays a role in the transplant- ing of large trees. Besides our regular planting of 5,500 new trees each year, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's Forestry Division budgets for the transplanting of large trees using a rented tree spade. For us the upper size limit for a large tree is 6 to 8 inches (15 to 20 cm) DBH. We have determined that the cost and success of moving anything larger than this is not worthwhile. Transplanting trees using a tree spade typically fits one of three categories. The first and most preferred are the planned transplants. Second are the surprise or "command performance" transplants. Lastly, there are the enforced transplants which can be either planned or a surprise. Minneapolis residents value their trees. When park improvements are made or when develop- ment threatens trees in the public rights-of-way, 26 A 15-inch DBH (38 cm) southern live oak (Quercus virginiana) gets relocated to the grounds of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin in August 2005. Photo by Larry Maginnis City Trees