Serrano Park Community The Landscape Committee has started a project to try to protect baby volunteer trees, especially those in areas where we need them.
Large trees are very popular in our community but they have a mortality rate and we loose some to wind, drought, disease, insects, and risk evaluations. To maintain and even improve our canopy size, we need young trees to be ready to fill in for that dreaded day we loose a large tree. Part of the responsibility of managing an urban forest, is to plan for sustainability and mortality. Here we take a lesson from nature. It is important to maintain a multi-generational tree population just like in a rural forest. This is especially true on our embankments. Proper management takes a long-term program and in an HOA, a well established Landscape Committee is essential. As you walk our paths, it is clear that we have a lot of large trees with no young ones nearby. Our Landscape Committee is working to change that.
In areas where we maintain the landscape constantly, seedling trees are rare and have little chance of surviving when a few actually try to grow. The eucalyptus trees and pine trees can be very difficult to get unless we use a contract grower on a several year project. (We are working on this too.) However, we do get some baby trees showing up and we have begun a program to try to help them survive.
We have started marking trees we want saved with bamboo stakes and a green streamers. We trim the brush away, note the trees coordinates, and enter it in our tree inventory to remind us to monitor this tree. Our landscapers know to watch for these when trimming.
If this works, it should add a lot of free, healthy, trees to our forest. As they grow, some may not survive and some may need to be thinned out, but we expect many to become welcomed additions to our beautiful urban forest.
Please, do not disturb our bamboo stakes and streamers and help us to protect these struggling trees.
Mike Davison