Thursday, December 29, 2016

Two Views of Ivy

Eighteenth century British garden designer Humphry Repton wrote in Transactions of the Linnaean Society that ivy helps trees by keeping them warm in winter. He cites examples of old trees flourishing under blankets of ivy. Modern German forester Peter Wohlleben takes another view: he notes some trees in the forest he manages being choked by ivy when its trunks grow as thick as small trees themselves. As with everything in nature and gardening, it seems to be a matter of balance and moderation. Nature sends ivy out to harvest sunlight and create oxygen-producing greenery, and ivy is happy to do this even on rock face and brick walls. On oaks it chooses the non-leafy trunk, and provides raccoon habitat at the same time, as well as little funnels and cups in which rainwater collects for birds to sip.

So, young ivy helps more than it harms, and it would seem that the gardener's job is to keep it in check, rather than waste time and resources on all-out anti-ivy war. Better to fight the damage done by humans lopping branches and clearing "diseased" trees that someone says will fall on their roof.

Is it a question of displacement of attention when the real danger is too onerous to tackle? Protecting individual trees against another plant easier than confronting the reality that the whole urban forest is being  demolished by development? To quote another British author (Alan Bennett): "All architects are butchers". They kill just to clear the space before they begin their creations.

Monday, July 18, 2016

The Trees' Bill of Roots

WHEREAS TREES:
1. are rooted in intricate connection with Mother Earth

2. are made of sensitive, feeling, communicating living cells

3. respond continually to stimuli such as light, heat, cold, weather, predation, toxicity, nourishment

4. communicate with each other and a vast array of dependent plant, animal and microbial species and symbionts

5. keep hillsides and shorelines stable

6. resurrect as new life as they break down in soil

7. dress the planet with oxygenating, climate-stabilizing swathes of life and beauty

 WE HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE THE INHERENT RIGHT OF TREES TO:
1. remain rooted in their Mother the Earth

2. pull nutrients and water from the underground world

3. reach branches and leaves to the sky

4. expand their range as climate dictates

5. host a natural array of companion species

6. photosynthesize

7. exchange gases with the atmosphere (thus maintaining the atmosphere)

8. be allotted space even in urban areas

9. flourish un-logged, unpoisoned and unimpeded across the globe.

Trees' ability to turn light into matter keeps us, our food and our world alive. Our fate is rooted in their welfare: their roots are our roots.  What is the standing of trees in your region? What are you doing to defend them?
STAND TALL WITH TREES
 
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Tuesday, July 12, 2016

What green space that $7.6 million could buy ...

$7.6 MILLION for bike lanes in Victoria?? How much badly needed park space could be bought for that amount? How many heritage gardens saved? Trees planted?

Only a tiny minority ride bikes, but EVERYONE benefits from trees (ie from beauty, shade, oxygen ...). If climate change is the issue, deforestation causes much more of it than cars do. Strange priorities, Victoria.


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Sunday, April 3, 2016

More Climate Change Caused By Tree Loss Than By Car Emissions

The Victoria Regional Transit Commission seems to be misguidedly determined to DESTROY boulevard trees along Douglas Street between Tolmie and Hillside. If ever a neighbourhood needed the aesthetic, shading and air-cleansing effects of mature trees, it is that one.

The Transit Commission wants to make room for more traffic -- bus traffic in their case. Sadly, whether for buses, cars or bikes, concrete creates the urban "heat island effect", one of the sources of global warming. This program seems to be more about the war on cars (and those who drive them), than a part of the solution to climate change. Trees on the other hand ARE part of the solution, and worldwide, deforestation causes more climate change than do auto emissions.

The Victoria Citizens Action Network has set up a site with addresses you can email if you wish to fight for our urban trees. (Victoria_commission@bctransit.com, and mayorandcouncil@victoria.ca).
See www.savethesetrees.ca.

Mature leafy boulevard trees are a major part of the city's urban forest, which is constantly being eroded. The people who planted the boulevards decades ago understood their importance for ambience, health, air cleansing and mitigation of concrete ugliness, but the current powers that be seem to have forgotten.

More congestion we don't need, and large vehicles are part of congestion. Better if people just learn to share the existing roads -- and protect our trees.



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Wednesday, September 9, 2015

"More sinned against than sinning"

First we starve our trees of water during a drought -- thinking there is some better use for water than keeping nature alive -- and then, when the storms blow in and roots and branches crack and split like matchsticks, we blame our trees for collapsing on our buildings. Trees living within a stand are less likely to blow down, but we tend to leave trees standing singly and isolated around our buildings. What chance do they have in a drought and high winds, when the landscape becomes a "blasted heath"?

In late August the News reports were full of oaks, maples, fruit trees and firs blowing down on southern Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland, damaging cars and buildings, dragging down hydro wires -- one "offending tree" went through a window, said a CTV announcer.

"Offending" tree? The urban forest is the victim of offense, not perpetrator: it is eroded and abused, and who can be surprised that it keels over, tree by tree, at the first storm of the season? We must care for, not stress our trees if we want their services as oxygen and shade providers, bulwarks against climate change, habitat for wildlife and beautifiers of our increasingly sterile over-built residential environment. (The offending tree was of course sentenced to execution, without trial.)

Next time we have a drought, let's not make it worse. What good is the water in the reservoir (Victoria's stayed 85% full), when it's needed in the roots of trees? Water in roots is not lost, it's being circulated. Once the hydrological cycle is arrested, death follows. That's a tragedy.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Water restriction conserves dust

 More city birds perish for lack of water than lack of food. Birdbaths are needed, in every garden, but soil needs water too. When's the last time you saw an earthworm? Baby robins need to eat 14 feet worth of earthworms each day. When was the last time you saw a robin?

What is "water conservation" conserving? Dust.


Thursday, June 26, 2014

Keep those worms breeding in the soil -- water it!

According to that highly academic site funology.com in its "facts about animals" section, baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day. How do they find all these earthworms, as the weather gets hotter and the ground harder and towns all over the robin-world restrict water use among householders?

If we don't water our gardens and the grass where the worms live, they won't be there and the baby robins will starve (and the rich living soil will become mere dust). All's well in early spring when the rain is usually reliable, but the robin babies are cheeping with their mouths open in May and June, in the northern hemisphere.

How many of us have noticed that when we stand with our hoses aimed at the roots of thirsty plants, the chickadees, sparrows and hummingbirds cluster nearby and above us, dying for a drink? Raise up that hose, spray the leaves of trees and bushes, that's where the birds are hoping to find the droplets they need to drink. More city birds perish for lack of water than lack of food. Birdbaths needed too, in every garden.

What is "water conservation" conserving? Dust.