A gathering at Jones Beach State Park’s Environmental Center the evening of Friday, July 21 featured a plentiful raw bar along with beer and an informal repast.
Some swam.
Some found treasures.
Others simply socialized as dusk fell.
A good time was had by all.
Saturday commenced with two concurrent workshops. Mina Vescera, Extension Educator of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, presented about “Urban tree troubles? Test, don’t guess.” Vinnie Drzewucki, Urban Forestry and Horticulture Educator, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County spoke on “How to plant a tree using best management practices.”
Drzewucki stressed the importance of inspecting trees in the nursery before buying them: “You should be buying a perfect tree, not a tree with problems.” He recalled a nursery that gives a lifetime guarantee on their product, which makes sense since “we don’t plant trees for ourselves. We plant for future generations.” On selecting stock, he said “Don’t try to fix things. If the nursery couldn’t fix it, why do you think you can?”
“They hate me in the nursery because I tear the burlap apart to see the roots. I want to kick the tires! The more fibrous the roots, the better.”
He showed some of his favorite trees. “They should be selected for their interesting characteristics,” he said. Crape myrtle with its exfoliating bark “has winter interest,” he said, while Japanese stewartias are “very well-behaved trees.”
Drzewucki went over the advantages and disadvantages of container plants, ball and burlap and bare root. “You have to remember that with ball and burlap trees, ninety-five percent of the roots are left behind in the field,” he told the group. “The first thing a tree wants to do is reproduce those lost roots—the larger the tree is, the longer it takes to establish itself. I like to say, the first year they sleep, the second they leap.” Bare root plants are relatively inexpensive and good for community planting efforts.” He noted the practice of Rare Earth Nursery, which grows a tree in gravel hydroponically so that it creates a fibrous root system. “You take it out, dip it in hydrogel, he said, “and the trees can be planted while they’re in leaf, almost any time of the year.”
He described the value of staking street trees. “They’re not as vulnerable to vandalism, he said. “It also saves trees from being run over by a truck backing up.”
And he tackled the question of the best time to plant a tree: “The best time to plant a tree is when a customer wants to pay you to do it, whether it’s spring, summer or fall.”
“They hate me in the nursery because I tear the burlap apart to see the roots. I want to kick the tires! The more fibrous the roots, the better.”
New York City had a sizable cohort at the ReLeaf Conference this year.
When queried as to why she thought this was the case, Rachel Grumm, Senior Forester, Permits and Plan Review with New York City Parks pointed out, “Because New York City Parks is always used as an example of all the best that’s going on in urban forestry. If New York has the most up-to-date practices we have to be up on the important things going on now.”
Kelly DeVine of the Port Jefferson Tree Committee weighed in as to the importance of attending. “It’s great to be around professionals who do this for a living, right down to citizens like myself who are here because we love the environment and want to serve that impulse by learning the right methods and practices.” She was inspired, she said, to get residents in her community to adopt a tree, fostering a container tree in their back yard over the winder and then having a planting event in the spring.
“Sometimes I sneak around my neighborhood with a pair of loppers”
Additional workshops Saturday morning included a hands-on tree planting demo at Hofstra Arboretum with Michael Runkel, Director of Grounds and Landscape. Also, Bill Jacobs, program Manager, Long Island Invasive Species Management Area, presented on “The impact of invasive trees in the urban environment.
NYSCDEC, Jacobs said, is currently updating its “New York Prohibited and Regulated Invasive Plants” Prohibited trees currently include sycamore maple, angelica tree and amur cork tree. Regulated trees include Norway maple and black locust. Jacobs confided, “Sometimes I sneak around my neighborhood with a pair of loppers” to cut down the English ivy.
Nina Bassuk, Professor Emeritus, Cornell University, delivered the conference’s closing remarks on the topic of “Infrastructure innovation for urban tree health and sustainability.”
Asked for her reflections beforehand on the importance of the meeting, Bassuk said, “We started twenty-one years ago in Ithaca. Every year you hope that what you say will have some impact — practitioners and managers getting the word out to people who do the work. I’m seeing some people I’ve known for decades.” About the less familiar faces of younger attendees, Bassuk said, “It’s important to develop a core of people who have skills and can make a difference in the community.”
In her remarks from the stage, Bassuk recalled that when New York City discovered the bottom-line benefits of arboriculture and initiated the plan to plant one million trees, after three years thirty percent died or went missing. “Trees have benefits,” Bassuk pointed out, “but only if they do well.”
“Compacted soil is the biggest problem of the urban tree environment,” she told the audience. “The toughest trees in the world cannot withstand compaction.” Strategies for soil remediation include CU structural soil. She showed images of “sidewalks to nowhere – an experiment with structural soil to see how root system spreads, with a control of compacted soil” which produced “pancake roots.” She shared other techniques as well, “scoop-and-dump” and air spading. Bassuk reiterated, “People like to plant, but you’ve got to plant in a way that allows trees to grow and thrive.”
Why do tree people love to come to a tree conference and share ideas about growing trees?
Helene Tieger of Catskill Tree Council put it perhaps most succinctly: “Let’s face it, we’re geeking out.”
