Mother Nature’s Moment - May 2021
by: Lesley Bruce Smith, ISA Certified Arborist

These last two years we have all learned about our deep needs as humans to be together. We were not meant to live in isolation, to spend long hours, days, months with very little meaningful interaction with others. Going about our days behind masks, unable to even read the cues that all of us take for granted in our unspoken communications with one another. We have been diminished by all of this and knowingly or unknowingly are in grief around all we have lost.

Backyard Wisdom - September 2020
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Arborist

Forty-five years ago in Agronomy class I wondered what was so important about soil structure? Those of us in the plant world know that soil is made up of various ratios of sand, silt, clay and organic matter. We can test it for plant essential minerals like, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc. But what exactly is soil structure and why is it so important?

Backyard Wisdom - March/ April 2018
by: Gilbert A Smith, ISA Board Certified Master Arborist
photo credits: Gilbert A Smith and Lesley Bruce Smith
    
Give your trees a breath of fresh air? Normally we think the other way around, that trees give us a breath of fresh air, and they do. Without trees we would soon choke on our Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and die from lack of Oxygen (O2). Thank you trees! But did you know that tree roots breathe just like we do, “in with the O2 and out with the CO2”? Now you can amaze your friends with this myth busting fact. Try it out on your most knowledgable gardening friends. You'll be surprised by how few people, even landscapers, know this.

Tree of the Month

Sycamore • Platanus occidentalis

O the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash From the fields there comes the breath of new mown hay Through the Sycamores the candle lights are gleaming  On the banks of the Wabash, far away”

Maybe you recognize the state song of Indiana

The Sycamore tree is a standout, both because of its large size and it’s mottled white bark, that earns it the names of White Tree and Lacewood Tree. The bark of the Sycamore is too rigid to split or furrow as the tree expands (which is what most other trees do). Instead, “plates” of Sycamore bark break off and fall away revealing lovely, massive, white, mottled trunks.