Trees were what the conventioneers wanted to see-and trees were what they got.
First, the members of the Society of Municipal Arborists applauded the health of the ficus trees in the atrium lobby of their Near North Side hotel. “I see you came around and did some trimming before we got here,” said one out-of-towner, as he kidded a local host.
Then, about 100 delegates set out on a three-hour exploratory walk through the leafy plazas near the Wrigley Building, the NBC Tower, the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers and into Grant Park. Their verdict: impressive.
The four-day convention last week drew together people who look after city trees across the country. Topics ranged from the arcane-can girdling roots be prevented?-to the downright scary: how to deal with such job hazards as bee stings, bites from frightened squirrels, loss of fingers from errant chain saws and the anger of citizens when branches, accidentally dropped from great heights, land on their cars.
Nor were the meetings without passion.
“You got sap in there,” someone yelled when a slide carousel jammed.
“Shame!” shouted one speaker, talking of sleazy nurseries that pass along bent or scarred trees to unscrupulous city landscapers seeking to cut costs.
Others told jokes about other tree professionals, notably landscape architects. But the point of the gathering was serious: to figure out ways to push trees at a time when municipal budgets are under strain and city forestry services are being cut back or, in some cases, eliminated.
“Trees are so important to urban environment that they would have to be planted even if they were squat and ugly,” said one speaker, Laurence Hall, a past president of the International Society of Arboriculture. “Instead, they are beautiful, graceful instruments, dealing with serious, urgent problems. As arborists, we can tell people we are making the world a better place to be.”
Trees, he noted, are nature’s air conditioners, cutting wintry blasts and softening harsh summer sun. They suck up automobile exhaust fumes, stop bits of matter flying through the air, draw in water runoff, add to property values, look beautiful and, he said, “help to tranquilize our minds.”
Humans often have a strong emotional response to “a grand old tree,” Hall said. Many people, returning to old homes, will hug a favorite tree, in the same way they would greet a relative. We go back to forests not to get away from it all, but to get back to it all, to mankind’s beginnings.”
Yet, this is a period of considerable stress for city trees and for those who care for them, an idea that was reflected in the theme of the proceedings, “Urban Forestry: The Best of Times . . . the Worst of Times.”
“Trees are not always popular,” noted one speaker, James Finley Jr., a longtime Illinois Bell executive who is now a consultant to Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department. Limbs fall on house roofs. Roots stretch into unwanted areas. People complain about leaf droppings and blocked views.
In addition, arborists “are a great source of neighborhood entertainment,” he said. The arrival of a tree-trimming crew often draws people from houses “to tell you what branches to cut, how to shape trees-plus everything that is wrong with the city, from broken sidewalks to blocked sewer openings.”
The nation’s urban trees are worth about $30 billion, estimated another speaker, William Kruidenier, executive director of the International Society of Arboriculture. Trees keep up a tax base by improving property values. Yet 61 percent of American cities have no organized forestry service to deal with management or planning. Where they do exist, forestry services consume only about one-half of 1 percent of a city budget, he said.
Trees make good citizens
Properly planted, trees could save $2 billion a year in urban energy costs, Kruidenier estimated. In northern climates, evergreen trees placed on the north and west sides of buildings can act as buffers from winter winds. Other trees, placed about 20 feet south of a house, can offer protection from summer sun.
Several speakers talked of the need to include trees as a standard urban benefit, along with municipal services such as streets, sewers and utilities. “Trees make neighborhoods livable and alleyways enjoyable,” noted Richard Henkel, a 32-year veteran of the tree-nursery industry. But like humans, trees face considerable stress and strain from living among so many people.
Tree trunks get nicked by lawnmowers, as well as by snowplows, golf balls, bicycles and cars. One increasing problem is picnickers who dump hot charcoal at the end of a day of barbecuing, often burning the base of a tree. During construction projects, many trees are damaged, or worse. One speaker talked of “tree euthanasia,” the killing of a tree that, in human terms, is found to be in the wrong place, such in the path of an impending highway.
Some arboreal decisions are simply dumb. In housing subdivisions, native topsoils often are replaced with more compacted soils during the installation of sidewalks, streets and sewers. Then developers plant native trees, which, looking for familiar ground, become confused and often decline.
Keeping up the count
A good municipal program knows where every tree is and provides care and management, the group was told by the convention’s host, Steve Bylina. Bylina heads Chicago’s Bureau of Forestry, which has a budget of $11.3 million, including a $1 million federal grant, to plant and care for the city’s 500,000 trees.
“The mayor is nationally recognized as a tree enthusiast,” said Bylina’s boss, Eileen Carey, the city’s commissioner of streets and sanitation, accepting for Mayor Richard Daley a plaque honoring the city’s arboreal efforts.
“I was riding with the mayor along West Madison Street not long ago and he said, `How beautiful this street would be if it was lined with trees,’ ” Carey said. “That’s how he is all the time. `Don’t just plant one. Plant a lot.”‘
New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles have cut their tree programs in recent years. But Chicago’s corps of 100-odd municipal arborists, part of the nation’s largest urban forestry program, planted 12,000 trees last year. They hope to put in even more this year, as part of a program to eventually double the city’s tree population.
In some areas, it’s hard just to keep up.
Thomas Green, who teaches urban forestry at Western Illinois University in Macomb, told the audience of a 1990 inventory he undertook of Lincoln Park, which, he found, had about 15,000 trees, one of which was in danger of falling on the area where visitors line up for lagoon boat rides.
About 40 percent of the park’s trees will need to be replaced in the next 20 years, requiring the planting of almost 300 trees a year, just to keep up, Green said. But not everyone wants ailing trees cut down. Dying trees, filled with rot and bugs, attract woodpeckers and other wildlife.
But there are ways to help trees survive. One is to provide receptacles, especially near parking lots, for picnickers to dump ashes before they head home. Another is to build mounds around trunks near sports areas so that balls will roll away and players, chasing them, won’t bang into trees, nicking delicate root structures.
“We fight a lonely war, for trees, for green space,” Green said. “We fight for more trees so that, tomorrow, people may enjoy our atmosphere better.”
“We ask property owners if they actually want a tree,” said Jerry Clark, the city arborist for Seattle, where 500 volunteers joined together last year in a program to plant 2,000 trees. “If they say yes, they will probably spend some time looking after it.”
“Trees are a necessary part of the urban environment,” said John Sosnoski of Detroit, this year’s president of the Society of Municipal Arborists, in the keynote address. It is necessary, he said, to think of trees, not as a liability, but as a community asset. “This is what makes the ’90s so exciting. People are finally listening to what we have to say.”
