Why Trees Die after Construction

 Here's a few interesting casualties that manifested this spring...

I am not a certified arborist, so these are observations from experience and my apprenticeship courses at Kwantlen and general research (the UBC Botanical Garden forum is a good source).

This first photo is of a Cypress spp. that showed stress early this spring and looked like this by June. The owner (a neighbour to one of my clients) raced over to get my (free) diagnosis en route to an appointment.

I noted that the interlocking-paver driveway, installed with the house reno/reconstruction five years ago, had probably removed the rootzone critical to the tree's survival. It was already marooned in a narrow space next to the road, and trees can take a surprisingly long time to die, as they draw on dwindling resources.

There is evidence of cypress tip moth on the branches (next photo) but these little critters only attack stressed trees. The cypress behind this one is fine--so another factor (excavated rootzone...?) had to weaken the tree first.

 The next photo (right) is of the trunks of a mature Arbutus unedo/strawberry tree hedge, buried in a temporary gravel access path installed on a construction site next to another one of my gardens. Several pines and a hardy hibiscus were also buried in the construction landslide from next door!

When I called the construction company to complain, they called back immediately with profuse apologies and removed the gravel the next week, building a temporary retaining wall to keep it on the property line. Nevertheless, the gravel had already been in place for at least a month. If the soil was compacted too much in that time, the plant roots won't get enough air/water/etc. and the plants could start to fail sometime in the future. The company has assured me they will pay for any damages...but if I hadn't called they would have simply got away with it. When construction companies jump, you know they're doing something they darn well know they shouldn't be doing.

The last photo is of a formerly lovely and mature Arbutus menziesii specimen on the same street--also on a site that underwent major construction about five years ago. The problem here is that the wild genus of Arbutus cannot handle rootzone disturbance of any kind. These trees naturally grow out of oceanside bluffs, or seed in the driest of understories, and defy any measure of cultivation. On this site, well-meaning designers installed an irrigated garden bed around the base of the tree with this result...several years later.

So the moral of the story here is if a tree is in massive failure or clearly dead, the cause may be traced to changes in the rootzone during and after construction.

Voodoo Lilies and Dinosaur Salad

 Here's me, with my voodoo face on. There's a Dracunculus vulgaris, which is the awesome Latin name for a Voodoo lily which is the awesome common name for Dracunculus vulgaris. Full circle.

This...thing...emerged from the blackberry thicket alongside the railway tracks at Sue & Hugh's...seemingly out of nowhere, but in fact their friend Mary (who is verging on 100 years old) used to garden around there, and brought in fascinating species from all around the world. Every year, something new and sometimes atrocious springs to life from some inexplicable dormancy, and this year, this was it.

I was a couple days late for the photo-op: the spathe (white/purple bit) was a lurid purple in it's prime, and the spadix (black bit) was somewhat more, ah-hem, erect. The stem (right) still shows the leopard print appropriate to such an inflorescence.

I've also included a pic of a monster Gunnera manicata (below) that Jen & I cycled by in Stanley Park this past weekend. (I tried to force some Kiwi tourists to also have a portrait taken with it but they bizarrely deferred in favour of a blue hydrangea.) This is massive and impressive and made me feel like an elf, which made me happy.

HEART-ing Roses...

A week or so ago, I started taking pictures of Anne's garden in the full flush of rose-bloom and discovered this optical illusion. (above).

The chartreuse foliage of Choisya ternata 'Sundance' in the lower right corner completes the heart-shaped frame.

We were so pleased with this discovery that we took out-of-season Valentines shots of each other. How cute are we?





































(I'm so skinny. I need to gain weight. Send avocadoes. French fries?)

Something Stinks in the State of Osborne House

 

This is me, with my stinky face on.
That is a garbage pail, full of comfrey tea/stew. It smells like a bad cow disease.

I actually had two stinky things go down at our shared-house estate this month.

The first one started out like comfrey--the common deep-rooted herbaceous perennial heralded for mining minerals from the soil and making them available at the surface: mulch with the leaves and as they decompose they deposit the goods around your crops.

Or chop grand quantities into a garbage pail of water, let stew for several weeks, then dilute the resulting green slurry in a watering can and pour around your plants. This is supposedly very very good for your plants. Very nutritious.

However. Not only does the pail itself emanate lurid drafts that are commonly diagnosed as invisible leaks in the city sewage pipes, but the entire landscape, once doused, reeks of some freshly deposited...bad cow disease. I repeat myself.

The second stinky thing in our shared-house estate resulted in this makeshift sign being posted in the front foyer.

You know something's rotten when you have to post a sign like this.

Yes, I had to evict someone this month, due to a completely off the charts 'birthday party.' Shocked and furious can describe my reaction (in that order).

I don't discriminate by age in my choice of housemates--I've had (and have) several mid-twenties people who are responsible and awesome. There are people out there, I have discovered, who will just do what they want to do when they want to do it, in spite of previous discussions and agreements for the common good. Seems to come down to being self-involved. Seems to come down to being evicted.

So as of today, he is gone, I'm a little wiser, and I have resolved to mulch with comfrey leaves rather than make comfrey stinky-tea.

 
And I'm giving myself a big beautiful lovely-smelling rose for having to deal with all that!

Here's Anne's 'D.L. Braithwaite', from the David Austen rose collection.

House of (Rainbow) Chards

How did this become...this?


This little patch of rainbow chard survived the winter like so, below. We at the house ate it during the green-starvation months of March...April...but not fast enough. When the spring bulbs bloomed, it blended in with the fun. By June, the stalks had grown skyward in a twisted mass of Dr. Seuss-ian, Wizard of Oz-ian proportions. The 8' bamboo frame, intended for my pole beans, had become a House of Chards, madly on the verge of seeding.

Alas, I ripped it out.

On the Back Patio at Bean Around the World

Last year, I started helping Barney beautify the back patio of the Bean Around the World in West Van. This was super, considering my lifetime secret desire to work at a coffee shop, which I never actually have done. Strange.

Bean had been my longtime pitstop--ever since I pedalled by as the bicycle-gardener and leaned my bicycle on the tree out front on Marine Drive for a half-way cuppa en route to clients down the winding road. Bean seems to be the place where the 'real people' pitstop in West Van--the workers, the poets, the daily philosophers. Or maybe you just feel 'real' when you drop in, because there are familiar faces and a small-town well-worn laugh-lines feel to the place. In any case, I was secretly happy to be asked--specifically, Barney said, because I operate in such an original way and he likes weirdos. (He didn't really put it that way :)

By this time, I was scooting around on the Ruck and had to pull in around back, like so. 

(Aw, there's my little red scooter, predecessor to my little white scooter. An aside.) It probably took a while, but I inevitably met Cec, the old guy who always sat around back with friends or with whoever was seated on the apple crates or miniature set of wooden furniture that Barney eventually set out by the dumpster for smokers and their ilk.

Everyone talked to Cec. He was the 'good morning' guy--the guy who gave you your first smile of the day after you left your house. When I pulled up on the scoot, he always waved me in and offered to watch my gear while I went in to grab a coffee. He created an atmosphere of comraderie on the back steps.

I worked with Barney, planning the plantings while he ripped down the old arbour, found new planters and painted patio furniture a driftwood shade of gray.

The day we shopped and brought in the carefully selected plants--a new Japanese maple, a Japanese Umbrella Pine (Sciadopytis), Spanish lavender, new grasses and flowers, and somewhat strangely, squash plants I'd grown from seeds from my mom--Cec was there to supervise. When I planted the maple in its sleek new gray square planter, Cec placidly offered to steady it by the trunk while I packed in the soil. It was natural for him to have a hand in the process. It was his patio after all.

 The squash grew down to the ground over the 

summer. People were curious and delighted and picked the fruit. In late summer, the vines mildewed and we cut them off. Eventually, I dug out the spent annuals and planted daffodil bulbs for spring, decorating the boxes with willow switches, fir boughs, and holly for Christmas. I don't have a picture of that.

Then I dove into school for three months over the winter, and one day when the winter rains paused I thought I'd better check on the daffodils, and scooted by to clear the old evergreen boughs from the emerging shoots. Cec was the first person I saw.

One of the best parts of being a gardener is coming back in the spring to familiar faces--plants and humans. Part of you realizes that you are a sign of spring yourself. After an intense winter of studying and computers and rainy highways, there was extra delight in seeing Cec there again, overseeing the back patio plants and humans.

And then, one morning in May, half-way through the week, I arrived to no Cec on the step.  When I arrived at the counter Barney told me that we'd all lost Cec that past Monday. I gaped. I ran to the bathroom for a tear. Barney gave me a hug.

Cec had had a heart attack in the line up to Air Care, and had passed away before he reached the hospital.

Later this June, Cec's family and friends gathered on the back patio for his memorial. That's when I got the photo of him that I have on the fridge.

That's when we all realized how involved Cec had been at the coffee shop--how he'd helped staff open in the morning, showed the new kids where things were. That's when we learned he'd been  rugby player and a janitor and a coach, and how he'd always been great with kids and humans in general. 

Up on the deck, Cec's longtime friends sat on real furniture, drinking coffee. Down by the dumpster, in a circle of apple crates on the parking lot, the young staff and Barney and the dumpster-philosophers gathered.

And when we planted up the patio in May, both Barney and I paused to agree that Cec sure would have liked to have been there. 

Bean here. Bean missed.

(That's Crocosmia 'Lucifer' in the planters. Glorious.)