Tree Watertown's Fall, Bare Root,
Volunteer Tree Planting History
Tree Watertown (Watertown, New York) was an
early adopter of the Cornell bare root planting
method. Watertown Planning and Community
Development Director Mike Lumbis heard UHI
Director Nina Bassuk speak about bare root at the
1996 NY ReLeaf conference in New Paltz, New York.
"The first year we tried bare root was 1997," Lumbis
says. "We could immediately see how much more afford-
able it would be for the City and how much easier it
would be for the volunteers who come to the spring
Rotary tree planting events and the fall Tree Watertown
tree planting events." Watertown gets its bare root
trees from nurseries that have hydrogel root dipping
setups in place per the UHI bare root method protocol.
Lumbis works closely with City Planner and Urban
Forestry Coordinator (and MFI 2017 Grad) Mike
DeMarco, who was hired by the City in 2016. We
spoke with DeMarco about recent bare root trends
in Tree Watertown's planting. In the fall of 2021, he
selected 17 different taxa for the 50 trees that vol-
unteers planted, and in the fall prior, he selected
20 different taxa for the 50 trees. All of the trees
planted by volunteers in fall are bare root.
In terms of oaks, DeMarco has been eschewing ubiq-
uitous red oaks in favor of other oaks with good to
excellent tolerance of the stresses of the urban envi-
ronment, like swamp white oak (Q. bicolor), bur oak (Q.
macrocarpa) and 'Urban Pinnacle' bur oak, Crimson Spire
32 CityTREES
