Tree Stewardship Class

The first Tree Stewardship class was held last night - and thanks to my husband David Taylor and Allen Wheeland for joining me in this adventure! It was a fascinating evening - and the next four classes are going to be very interesting as well. I thought I'd share with you my initial thoughts after this class.

There are a lot of city bureaus dealing with the issues of ecology and specifically trees. They are trying hard to get along and work together, with varying results. I think what we've witnessed is this disharmony of bureaus with differing raison d'etres working it out in front of us. Thank God Parks is winning!

The tree experts in this town are many and varied. In this class, I think we will meet most of them.

Intuitively I knew that trees are important to our ecology and our public health (both physical and mental) but I had no idea how important they are to all the infrastructure of our environment. More later about this.

I now know why diversity of species are important - we all get that since our elms are coming down. This class got a little deeper into that question and made clear that the City will never plant like they have in the past, putting one species in a row down a boulevard or median strip.

As I came back down Omaha from my walk with my dog this morning and saw the remaining elms standing in their gigantic rows, I started to cry. I love these elm trees, whether they should have been planted like this or not. The fact is that they are lovely and graceful parts of our landscape. And the bad news is that eventually they will all be gone in a few more years, whether we like it or not.

The good news, of course, is that the City will replant trees here. I want to make sure that they're big trees going in - not some puny imposters that will not provide the canopy that the elms have provided us. I think Karl Dawson gets that and so is suggesting the obvious ones that will grow and expand out - the oaks and the maples, as well as some evergreen if we want it (but nobody, not even me wants that right now). This is good. Big trees are important to our landscape (and little ones have their place, too).