Plants and especially trees have many benefits not only to our health and communities, but also a significant benefit to our environment. Just like our own optimum health, to achieve these benefits a combination of best practices must be followed. Understanding what these best practices are and putting a plan together to achieve them is the road map to success.
To achieve optimum health ourselves, we can’t just eat a healthy diet or just have a consistent exercise routine. We must combine both a healthy diet and a consistent exercise routine in order to achieve success and positive results. The same goes for trees in our urban environments. It is true that tree replacement programs and planting initiatives have over the years been more and more common in our communities. Although, professional tree maintenance and preservation of existing trees is often overlooked, insufficiently funded and consistently awarded solely on the lowest bid. All too often, trees are considered expendable in our urban areas and we lose the benefits that mature trees provide. Planting initiatives are great, but if sufficient resources are not consistently allocated to maintaining our urban forests over time, then the likelihood of them becoming mainly comprised of mature trees is limited and the potentially significant benefits are lost.
Trees as we all know, grow at a slow and steady pace and take many years to achieve maturity. Oak, for example, depending on the species, may not produce its first acorn until 20-30 years old. All trees take time to mature, but once they reach maturity the volume of their benefits provided are significant compared to a young tree, simply due to the size of the tree and leaf quantity and surface area. A mature tree in a single year can absorb over 48 pounds of carbon dioxide. In Chicago, per a US Forest Service study, trees remove 18,000 tons of air pollution each year. The list of benefits can go on and on, other benefits of trees include cooling effects through shading and evapotranspiration, groundwater filtration, stormwater runoff management, psychological health benefits for humans, and much, much more.
All too often, tree maintenance is the first thing cut from commercial and municipal budgets and the last thing considered on large scale development projects. Tree plantings, they are often just that, plantings that lack professional advisement and planning to best address the right tree for the right place. As a society, we can change that thinking around and focus on all the pieces of professional arboriculture which include tree planting, preservation, and long-term maintenance. As we make professional arboriculture our primary focus we will increase the age and maturity of our urban forests and maximize the benefits that they provide our environment, communities, cities, and society as a whole.