Safety On The Job: Six Steps To Adopting A Culture Of Safety
Turf Editors
Tree Selection For Wind, Salt & Fire Risks
Climate extremes and storms seem to increasingly dominate headlines. Drought, forest fires, hurricanes, and flooding are just a few of the weather-related crises we saw in the U.S. in the last few years. Such weather impacts can wreak havoc on prized, irreplaceable, and otherwise long-lasting landscaping. While the simple solution is a return to natives, even natives or zone appropriate plants can suffer when the zone experiences extremes. The record breaking freeze in Texas and the blazing heat in Oregon last year damaged or killed otherwise healthy zone-appropriate plantings in just a matter of days. According to a 2018 Yale School of the Environment paper, U.S. plant hardiness zones are moving north at 13 miles per decade. When the map was last updated in 2012, nearly half the country was upgraded to half a zone warmer than it had been in 1990. The Arbor Day Foundation says this affects which trees are right for planting. In 2015 it completed an extensive updating of zones and documented the shifts since 1990. While maps shift, mature trees can’t shift with them. We can fertilize, prune, and keep them at optimum health to better weather adverse conditions, but ultimately our most valuable landscape elements must often just bear up. Which is why we need to give them a fighting chance. We need to pick the right trees for potentially wrong conditions. This is the era of the tough tree. What makes a tough tree? One that is proven to best withstand nature’s onslaught. ...
Tree Selection For Wind, Salt & Fire Risks
Climate extremes and storms seem to increasingly dominate headlines. Drought, forest fires, hurricanes, and flooding are just a few of the weather-related crises we saw in the U.S. in the last few years. Such weather impacts can wreak havoc on prized, irreplaceable, and otherwise long-lasting landscaping. While the simple solution is a return to natives, even natives or zone appropriate plants can suffer when the zone experiences extremes. The record breaking freeze in Texas and the blazing heat in Oregon last year damaged or killed otherwise healthy zone-appropriate plantings in just a matter of days. According to a 2018 Yale School of the Environment paper, U.S. plant hardiness zones are moving north at 13 miles per decade. When the map was last updated in 2012, nearly half the country was upgraded to half a zone warmer than it had been in 1990. The Arbor Day Foundation says this affects which trees are right for planting. In 2015 it completed an extensive updating of zones and documented the shifts since 1990. While maps shift, mature trees can’t shift with them. We can fertilize, prune, and keep them at optimum health to better weather adverse conditions, but ultimately our most valuable landscape elements must often just bear up. Which is why we need to give them a fighting chance. We need to pick the right trees for potentially wrong conditions. This is the era of the tough tree. What makes a tough tree? One that is proven to best withstand nature’s onslaught. ...
