City Trees

Green-Wood Cemetery's Bare Root Successes Green-Wood Director of Horticulture and Curator (and 2018 MFI Grad) Joe Charap started planting bare root trees in Brooklyn, New York's iconic Green-Wood landscape in 2017. He says that he was inspired by Nina Bassuk's advocacy for the utility of the bare root method approach, and that in recent years, Green-Wood has focused on using bare root trees to rapidly and effec- tively reestablish canopy for a variety of reasons, including replacing trees lost to storms. Charap says, "Bare root has proven to be an immensely successful, rewarding approach for us, with much, much less mortality. This year, from a successful application from the NYSDEC's Urban and Community Forestry Grant program, we are primarily using bare- root material as the dominant approach to plant throughout our landscape." For ever- greens, Green-Wood still relies on B&B material, because they are never in a state of dormancy and as such, are more prone to desiccation. Thus far, Green-Wood has planted 174 bare root trees in their effort to do succession/storm recovery planting. They've stayed in the 1 to 2 inch (25 to 51 mm) caliper range, with a rare 2.75 inch (70 mm) caliper selection, and they plant in both spring and fall. "With bare root trees, we can plant near mature, senescing trees without unduly disrupting the big tree root systems," Charap says. "Our carbon footprint is also much lower when we plant bare root. We don't need any machinery to plant bare root, and the ship- ping of bare root trees is less costly because they weigh so much less than B&B trees." In 2017, J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. Nursery donated bare root trees of their own introduc- tions to Green-Wood: Emerald City tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), Royal Raindrops cra- bapple (Malus), First Blush cherry (Prunus), Pink Flair flowering cherry, and American Dream swamp white oak (Q. bicolor). They all established well and are performing beautifully. Charap also connected with Brotzman's Nursery in Ohio and eventually Schichtel's Nursery in New York; he's now ordering bare root almost exclusively. The few failures he's seen with bare root were with very small caliper yews (Taxus sp.), but when one of the four survived and flour- ished, the payoff was still there because they were so affordable ($35 USD/each) and easy to plant. He also lost one of two bare root baldcypress (Taxodium distichum)—but the remaining one is doing great. "We've used Nina Bassuk's bare root method guide to help with our selections, but we occasionally plant species that aren't recommended for bare root, because with such inexpensive material, we can afford to trial and evaluate," Charap says. Some of the more unusual trees Charap has tried out successfully bare root include a Liriodendron tulipifera × chinensis and a Tilia oliveri. He shared with us his bare root order for 2022, which includes more hybrid tulip trees, yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava), Mandarin Jewel Kousa dogwood (Cornus kousa), Farges filbert (Corylus fargesii), hawthorn (Crataegus phaeno- pyrum 'Ohio Pioneer'), sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua 'Worplesdon'), Chinese cork oak (Quercus variabilis), striped maple (Acer pennsyl- vanicum 'Joe Witt'), sugar maple (A. saccharum 'Powder Keg'), horsechestnut (Aesculus × arnoldiana 'Autumn Splendor'), yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis), bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis), yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea), Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus 'Prairie Titan'), Carolina silverbell (Halesia carolina), but- ternut (Juglans cinerea ), osage orange (Maclura pomifera 'Witchita'), Cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acuminata), swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor), American linden (Tilia americana), and elm (Ulmus 'St. Croix'). In a future update, we can learn how these selections fared. 34 CityTREES

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