By Myra Klockenbrink
Greenwich is blessed with tens of thousands of trees. They grace our homes, streets and parks. They provide us with an abundance of services. Through photosynthesis, trees absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen that we breathe. They improve air quality by removing airborne pollution. They act as a barrier to protect land from wind, flooding, soil erosion, and fires. They protect the soil from evaporation and conserve water. They provide food and habitat for a diversity of wildlife, as well as shelter and shade.
How do we give back to our trees? The single best thing you can do for your trees is presenting itself in the coming weeks. Allow the leaves to remain around the trees. The leaves nourish the trees over time and contribute to their long-term health. They can be made into a beautiful mulch either by putting through a chipper or mowing over them to break them up. The leaves settle in around the trees and feed them and other plant life and provide important habitat for insects and other invertebrates.
Looking to forests as a model, it’s seldom a tree stand alone in a bald landscape of lawn. Trees grow in communities of other trees – their siblings and offspring – and as we are learning they communicate with one another and share resources. They also grow within an understory of smaller trees and shrubs, as well as a ground layer of perennial plants. This matrix provides invaluable habitat for wildlife, including insects and birds.
We can mimic this model by planting berry-bearing native shrubs like arrow wood or nannyberry viburnum, or high bush blueberry that feed birds and provide a “soft landing” important for bird cover, as well as bringing native diversity into the landscape.
Trees keep us comfortable in the heat. They are the landscape’s sweat glands. They cool by transpiring moisture up into the atmosphere and consume heat, while soaking up excess rainfall minimizing flooding. Without trees our town would be 5-8 degrees hotter and flooding would be much worse.
The trees on our properties are part of what makes our community beautiful, not to mention that they enhance our property values. Real estate assessors will tell you that a house on a lot with trees or in a neighborhood with mature trees is up to 20 percent more salable than a house with no trees.1 Mature trees in high-income neighborhoods command on average a 10-15 percent price increase on home value.2
We need to protect this mature tree canopy. We are often encouraged to plant trees and fall is a great time to plant. Autumn is cooler and usually has enough rainfall to help establish a young tree. But even better than planting a new tree is not cutting down existing healthy trees. These trees are integrated into the soil and plant community and removing them from the landscape is a violence to that community and robs the landscape of the services mature trees provide.
Trees have always been important to us. We evolved with them and they evolved with us. They offer the ineffable services of stillness and quiet that we depend on even when we are not consciously aware of it.
To learn more about how trees serve us, join speaker Dr. Susan Masino for her presentation on Forest, Trees and Brain Health. Thursday, September 28, at the Second Congregational Church at 1pm.
The following day, September 29, arborist Sav DeGiorgio will be giving a “Walk & Talk” about how to care for our trees at Bruce Park @ 10:30am. Meet at the picnic area off Davis Street.
1Currid, Peggy (ed). Guide for Plant Appraisal (9th ed). International Society of Arboriculture, Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers. 2000.
Internal Revenue Service (US) Publication 547: Casualties, Disasters, and Thefts (https://www.irs.gov/uac/About-Publication-547)
2Wolf, K. L. 2007 (August). City Trees and Property Values. Arborist News 16, 4: 34-36.
Myra Klockenbrink is the Co-Chair of the Land/Water Sector of Greenwich Sustainability Committee.
