In too many of the subdivisions that have cropped up around Mary Nava’s Algonquin home, mature trees were bulldozed and later replaced with what she calls “sticks” that must grow for decades before they offer any real shade or beauty to the neighborhood.
So when the developer of a new subdivision said he needed her help to save dozens of mature trees at the site next to her property off Sleepy Hollow Road, she readily agreed.
“Trees are the lifeblood of the planet,” Nava said. “I hate to see them destroyed.”
So, for the next several months, Nava will serve as a sort of foster parent to 84 white pines uprooted from the Stone Ridge Estates subdivision site, where they stood in the path of the narrow, 10-acre subdivision’s only access road.
Developer Frank Sajtar transplanted the trees in recent weeks to a previously bare portion of Nava’s 20-acre parcel, across from Westfield Community School. They will remain there until the grading and other groundwork for the subdivision is complete.
Then, Sajtar said, he will move the roughly 35-foot-tall trees back onto the subdivision, dispersing them among the 22 pricey, semi-custom homes to be built.
Sajtar said that when he began planning the development, he assumed the trees were too big to survive construction at the site. Then he met with Steve Ludwig, staff arborist for the village, which two years ago became the first in McHenry County to enact a tree-preservation ordinance.
Having reviewed Sajtar’s tree-removal permit application, Ludwig explained what could be done to help preserve the trees. He told Sajtar he could reasonably save 12 of the pines by moving them to the periphery of his property.
That’s when Sajtar’s plan took root to save all the trees by transplanting them onto Nava’s property and then reintroducing them to the site.
“It certainly is a unique way of going about it,” Ludwig said. While Ludwig added that most developers are unwilling to invest the time, money and effort involved in large-scale tree preservation, he also questioned whether all the trees will survive the effort.
“It slowed us down by about three and a half weeks,” Sajtar said, “because we could have just bulldozed everything and had them cleared in five days.”
Sajtar said he hopes to recoup some of the extra costs by buying fewer new trees that the village had asked for in its landscaping requirements, rather than raising the roughly $300,000 price tag on the 2,400- to 3,200-square-foot homes.
Ludwig said the survival of all the trees is in question, even with the twice-weekly, eight- to 10-hour soakings the trees get from water pumped out of a nearby pond. He said the village usually loses between 6 and 10 percent of the parkway trees planted in most of the village’s new subdivisions.
“When you unearth a tree, you are basically removing 90 percent of its sustaining root system,” Ludwig said. “But if he can save 50 percent of what he took out of there, that would just be tremendous compared to losing everything.”
Gary Watson, a staff researcher at Morton Arboretum in Lisle who has studied the success rate of urban tree transplants, said the pines’ survival ultimately will rest in the hands of future Stone Ridge homeowners.
Transplanted trees–especially large ones–need the diligent watering that the pines are now getting for several years after they are moved, he said.
“People don’t always realize how long it takes before a tree becomes fully established at its new site and can sort of fend for itself,” Watson said.
Ludwig said Sajtar’s attempt to save the pines is a testimonial to the village’s tree ordinance.
“Had we just allowed him to go in there and level the property without putting ourselves in the mix and trying to help him make sensible decisions about what to do with this tree stock, he may have never been aware he had something valuable on that property.”
Sajtar, a lifelong Fox Valley resident, said he hopes other developers in the area will follow his lead. He even contacted the builder of another new subdivision in town, offering to move the mature trees there into Stone Ridge if there were no plans to preserve them.
“I’m hoping this puts some pressure on other developments going up,” he said, “by making people realize this can be done.”
