Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
FEBRUARY 1, 2004, Issue 97
This past week, someone cut down yet another one of the aging Norways that once lined many of our side streets. While I'm not a bit sorry to see the Norway go, (See Issue 88, November 30, 2003), I am concerned that there's no replacement tree in sight; it should have been planted long ago.
Trees are an expense for the homeowner. Good quality baby trees are expensive. Grown trees need pruning. Eventually, the tree will need to be cut down. (Trees well selected for the spot, though, don't need a tree service pouring chemicals on them twice a year, so you can skip that part.)
So why plant one? Just because your birds and squirrels would like it? Just because your street looks ugly without large shade trees? You probably won't live long enough to see it mature anyway. So what's the point?
Well, trees are a good personal financial investment. Ask any Realtor. I've read studies that say that a well-placed tree or two can easily raise the market value of your home by 10% to 20. Historically, people planted trees around their homes for protection against strong summer sun and winter winds. Today, summer tree-shade noticeably cuts air conditioning bills as well as giving the property an enormous aesthetic boost.
Trees are a critical community health investment in today's world with greater amounts of air pollutants, global warming, and a thinning ozone layer. There's no question that the more trees a town has, the cleaner and cooler its air. Trees absorb measurable amounts of the pollutants and give back oxygen. Think of them as VERY LARGE air purifiers. They also help regulate the amount of moisture in the air by releasing water through the leaf pores. Studies also show that lots of tress (to shade parking lots, etc.) can cut the summer heat for the whole town by a few very significant degrees. If we don't need trees, why are parking spots under the trees the first taken?
The health benefit is also true for you personally. You need to get out and walk, right? Well, think of walking down the street on an intolerably hot summer day and going from the baking sun to the relief of cool shade under a big tree: you're feeling the combined affect of the tree's ability to clean the air; regulate the humidity, and provide shade. They say that for at least the next 20 years or so global warming and the thinning ozone layer will be major issues. Without shade, that walk is risking heat stoke, heart attack and skin cancer. Ditto working in your garden. Frankly, I thoroughly dislike the sunny part of my mother's garden because it's so hard working there in summer heat, covered up enough to guard against skin cancer.
So do like this neighbor of mine has done, and plant new trees a good twenty years before the old ones fall down and plant them to shade your house, garden and sidewalk.
Picture: an adorable baby red maple planted near some aging red and Norway maples.
Picture site: Chester Street and Hoyt Street in Stamford CT
Photo credits: Sue Sweeney
© Sue Sweeney 2005
What the readers said:
Yes, life as we know it is forever changing. We get more and more complicated as the minds become more and more devious. Lin (NY)
I love your Monday newsletter, and going to the website is just fine (it cuts the downloading time too). Apropos trees ,I remember my father telling me that when I traveled in China in the early 1920s city streets were bare of trees. When he returned in the mid eighties, he could not get over how urban tree planting and transformed the streetscape and climate. (The Mao regime fiercely misspent several decades in systematically killing birds, but they got it right in planting trees.) Jane (CT)
I've taken to downloading your pictures and putting them on my computer as screensavers and backdrops. Lovely loosestrife and rhododendrons and geese on the shore. Marc