Trees are environment’s best friend

Trees are environment’s best friend

The beginning of the 21st century has brought a lot of attention to climate change. With all the concern over this could-be environmental condition, I have wondered why the Environmental Protection Agency and the nursery industry have not put more emphasis on planting more trees everywhere.

All living plants take in greenhouse gas (co2) and change it into oxygen. Trees give our environment the biggest bang for our buck because of their ever increasing size and the amount each tree consumes of co2.

This is the balance that nature intended and how living plants and man need each other to exist. Someday I might hear the environmentalists and nursery industry explain the lack of public awareness of this fact.

In the meantime, I want to tell you about some great shade trees that grow well and also supply good fall color.

Additional benefits include shade to keep our home cooler in the summer and then dropping those leaves in the fall to let the winter sun help heat the home. Trees also are dirt blockers trapping dirt particles on their leaf surface until rain washes it to the ground below. Trees in leaf also absorb surrounding noise, keeping our home more peaceful. Let’s start with the maple family, a family of trees that grow quite well here in the tri-state.

Maple Autumn Blaze - A great red maple with beautiful red fall color. Relatively fast growing. Average mature size is 40-feet tall and 20-feet wide.

Maple Fall Fiesta – The most colorful and the fastest growing ofthe sugar maple family. Large dark green leaves that turn orange/red in the fall. Average mature size is 40feet tall and 30-feet wide.

Red Oak –The red oak is the best oak tree to plant in the tristate. Unlike it’s cousin the pin oak which is in the red oak family, the red oak turns a beautiful shade of scarlet and this tree drops all of its leaves in the fall.

Average mature size is 50-feet tall and 25-feet wide.

Zelkova Green Vase – Vaseshaped with upright arching branches. Orange to bronze-red fall color. Fast growing to average size of 50-feet tall and 25 feet wide. Leaves are similar to American Elm.

Taxodium Common Bald Cypress – A stately tree that looks like an evergreen during the growing season. It is actually one of three deciduous conifers. Small cones mature in fall. Pyramidal growing, fast growing beautiful tree grows 40-50-feettall and 15-18-feet wide.

Ginkgo Autumn Gold –This is a male ginkgo bearing no fruit. A handsome symmetrical conical form with a beautiful shape growing 50-feet tall and 25-feet wide. Great gold fall color with all the leaves falling in just 24-36 hours in late fall. Pest free as history has it is the only tree to survive the great fire of China.

Linden Greenspire –Maintains a single leader with a nice branching habit. This little leaf linden is about care free as any tree. Grows to 40feet tall with a beautiful rounded shape growing to 20-feet wide. Does well in difficult planting areas.

There are many other great varieties of flowering trees to consider as well, especially if the planting space is limited.

A final tip when planting any tree, please remember that with balled and burlap trees, you don’t want to plant or have planted any tree with a trunk larger than 2 1 ⁄2-inches caliper measured 6 inches from the ground.

Larger balled and burlap trees have 50 to 75 percent of their roots left in the nursery when dug and those trees will not grow for several seasons until the cut roots start to regrow enough to take in more moisture for the top of the tree. In fact, the same tree with a 2-inch trunk caliper will outgrow the larger one in just a few years and cost a lot less topurchase and plant.

Denny McKeown is owner of Bloomin’ Garden Centre