Ruppert Landscape Appoints Bob Jones as Chief Sales Officer
Jessica Schwartz
Mission Unstoppable: Women In Trees
In 2009, Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, Bear LeVangie, and Rebecca Seibel established the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop (WTCW) with a goal to create a safe, encouraging, and empowering learning environment for women to climb trees, with an emphasis on arboriculture. WTCW instructors, who have more than 100 years of experience in the tree care industry, aim to empower women and develop their tree climbing skills. According to the Addison County Independent, the organization has taught more than 700 women how a climbing arborist works, safe climbing techniques, and responsible tree care. This weekend, the Turfmutt Foundation will sponsor an episode of CBS’s “Mission Unstoppable” featuring the three tree care professionals, climbers, and instructors. The award-winning show, hosted by Miranda Cosgrove of iCarly fame, spotlights diverse females in unique STEM professions. This segment will feature the Vermont-based team demonstrating how to safely climb, descend, and use power tools to properly prune trees. Check with your local CBS station for airtime, and tune in to watch Ingersoll, LeVangie and Seibel on the job, doing the work they love while taking care of living landscapes. In the meantime, click on the link below to check out a preview of the episode: Mission Unstoppable: Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop To learn more about caring for trees, read our Tree Services® articles here.
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. ...
Get Equipped: Tree Care
Take a look at this assortment of tree care equipment that can add value to your professional lawn care and landscaping services. Notch Flow Rope Wrench & Fusion Flow Combo Notch Equipment and Kevin Bingham have come together to release a new Flow Rope Wrench and Fusion Flow Combo, giving tree professionals the freedom of custom friction on their ropes. The new Notch Flow Rope Wrench returns to the use of an adjustable bollard, which is an evolution from the ZK-1 model. The new Rope Wrench also features an improved ultra-low drag ascent which can be customized to a setup to save climber energy. With an adjustable concave stainless steel bollard providing custom friction setting and an improved ultra-low drag descent, the Notch Flow Rope Wrench fits rope diameter ranging from 7/16″ to ½”. DeWALT DXGP210 Gas Pole Saw The DXGP210 is designed with a low-kickback 10″ bar and chain for added safety and an automatic oiler that keeps the bar and chain well-lubricated to minimize maintenance and extend equipment life. A 27 cc full-crank, commercial-grade engine delivers reliable power for routine use. Reach farther with a 7′ extension pole and get a comfortable grip with overmold handles designed to lessen hand strain. This versatile pole saw can be converted into other tools to tackle more tasks with attachment capability and TrimmerPlus system compatibility. Brushcat™ Rotary Cutter Attachments The 44″ and 54″ Rotary Cutters are the newest attachments to the Brushcat lineup from Bobcat. The smallest two models in the ...
Why Mighty Oaks Should Be On Your Planting List
To many, Doug Tallamy needs no introduction. A renowned ecologist, his 2020 NY Times Best Seller, Nature’s Best Hope, showed homeowners how to turn their yards into conservation corridors. His latest book, The Nature of Oaks, was released in March 2021. Here he offers a message specifically written for Turf readers about why we should be planting more oaks. In case you haven’t heard: life on Earth is in trouble. Distressing statistics about declining biodiversity are being reported so fast they are running into each other. North America has lost three billion breeding birds in the last 50 years; Earth has lost 45% of its insects with continuing declines reported nearly everywhere; and the UN predicts one million species will go extinct in the next 20 years. Not only are we in the midst of the sixth great Earth extinction event, but loss of populations in species not yet extinct is rampant. We hear much about the climate crisis, and rightly so. What many fail to appreciate is that our disregard for the well-being of biodiversity is as grave a threat to humans as climate change, because it is healthy, productive ecosystems—not Best Buy or Costco—that support us, and it is biodiversity that makes ecosystems healthy and productive. To put it bluntly, we are destroying the natural world that we cannot live without. It’s not that we purposefully have nature in our sights. Rather, we have simply refused to share our spaces with the natural world. We have clung to ...
Improving Transplant Success Of Container-Grown Trees
Cregg and Rouse are involved in a research project at Michigan State University on “Improving transplant success of container-grown landscape trees.” Here are some of the findings they’ve shared with Turf Tree Services. Trees provide a myriad of functions and benefits in landscapes including shading, screening unwanted views, serving as focal points, and even capturing air pollutants and mitigating urban heat island effects. No wonder clients want to plant more of them! One of the first steps in the tree planting process is deciding on whether to plant ball-and-burlap (B&B) trees or trees grown in containers. Increasingly, landscapers and homeowners are opting for container-grown trees because they weigh less and are easier to handle and plant than conventional B&B trees. However, a major downside to growing trees in containers is the development of circling roots during production. The production of most container-grown shade trees starts with bare-root tree liners (or whips) that are planted in plastic containers, which typically range between 7 and 25 gallons. As roots grow, they eventually encounter the wall of the nursery container, deflect, and begin to circle. Container trees also commonly produce a heavy mat or “pancake” of roots at the container bottom. Both the circling roots around the sides as well as the pancake on the bottom of the root-ball are defects that can limit root egress into surrounding soil after planting. Root egress is essential to successful long-term establishment and for providing tree stability. Moreover, when roots continue to circle around the ...
Tree Services: Taking Tree Care To New Heights
EDITOR’S LETTER As an editor, you simply can’t be planning a main issue on Sustainable Landscaping and a special issue on Tree Care without Dr. Doug Tallamy coming to mind. Entomologist, college professor, and author of 2020 NY Times Best Seller, Nature’s Best Hope, Tallamy pioneered the concept of treating residential yards as “conservation corridors” within the larger ecosystem. Smithsonian Magazine called the book, “not just a horticultural revolution, but a cultural one, bridging the human-dominated landscape and the natural world,” while the Washington Post described it as “A full-blown manifesto that calls for the radical rethinking of the American residential landscape, starting with the lawn.” His most recent book, The Nature of Oaks, champions the mighty tree species for its ecological benefits. As you can imagine, I was thrilled when Dr. Tallamy agreed to write for Turf on why we should be planting more oaks in our landscapes. When it comes to planting, another college professor, Dr. Bert Cregg, and his team are doing important research on container-grown trees. He shares the latest findings on what transplant methods we should be using for greater success. A selection of tree care equipment and suggestions of tough trees for tough conditions round out our coverage. Happy Spring tree planting! cmenapace@groupc.com TreeServicesMagazine.com Tree Services: Taking Tree Care To New Heights April 2022 • Volume 16 • Number 1 FEATURES Improving Transplant Success Of Container-Grown Trees | The latest research on the most successful transplant methods of container-grown trees. Mighty Oaks ...
Win More Work With This Tree Tech
One of the best opportunities to differentiate your tree care services to potential clients is with a strong proposal. This small window of time with a client is where your company’s value and expertise can rise above the competition. And this is where the advantage of map-based software really shines. Map-based software offers a way for your company to back up recommendations with visual data that makes it easy for clients to picture the proposed work and see the reasoning behind it. Instead of racing to offer the lowest price point, you can visually demonstrate the value of your company’s expertise and why you are the provider best suited to meet the client’s tree care needs. The Changing Buying Process Technology has permanently changed the way customers make decisions. They are accustomed to visualizing their purchases in an online environment. They are more sophisticated in sourcing and evaluating proposals and they like to be able to review proposals when and where they want. Using a map-based software process not only shortens the time between field assessment and proposal submission, it offers your recommendations in a way that meets customers’ expectations for digital accessibility. For example, map-based proposals can facilitate “virtual walkthroughs” of the property when in-person meetings are not convenient. For many clients, the visible metric of proper tree management is a simple one. Do their trees look healthy? Clients may not understand the full arboricultural value of your company’s recommendations but they can easily gauge the quality of service ...
The Whys Of Winter Pruning & More
While there’s a lot of landscaping tasks that need to take place before the first freeze, luckily tree and shrub pruning is not one of them. In fact, there are actually several advantages to winter pruning — for both you and the plant. Here are a few. Visibility. When leaves have fallen from shrubs and trees, you can see the branch structure better. Shaping and eliminating crossed branches becomes much simpler, as does identification of any damaged or diseased branches. Less pest/disease risk. Pruning cuts are like a temporary wound on a tree. In winter months, these cuts will have less exposure to potential negative effects. According to a blog from Arbor Experts in Dayton, OH, “Tree diseases are typically caused or spread by bacteria, fungi, parasites, and insects. Unless the weather has been exceptionally warm, these disease agents are usually dead or dormant during winter months. As a result, diseases are less likely to be transmitted through tree work done in winter. Some trees, such as elm and oak, as well as trees infected with fire blight, are best pruned in winter specifically to minimize the risk of spreading Dutch elm disease and oak wilt.” Better overall health. When a tree is in dormancy, cuts heal faster and cause less stress to the tree. “A tree’s normal reaction to pruning is to stimulate new growth and to close the wound made by the pruning cut. When a tree is pruned in winter, it doesn’t cause new growth until spring, ...
Performing A Tree Species Analysis
Do your clients have too many of too few tree species? Probably. An overabundance of just a handful—such as elm, eucalyptus, Austrian pine, ash, silver maple and linden—is problematic. With species-targeting maladies such as Dutch elm disease and emerald ash borer, over-reliance on a particular tree, tempting as it may be, usually leads to big problems. Any property can be greatly improved with an evaluation aimed towards achieving greater tree diversity. Have The Conversation Among the services you provide to clients, is a tree species diversity analysis one of them? Or maybe that’s not the right term. “Right Trees, Right Place” or “Let’s Grow the Good Stuff” might get the point across better to customers. When you’re making the pitch, use terms and concepts they can relate to, such as an HVAC service contract. Create the analogy that periodic landscape assessments are essential to the continued health of the plantings, just as regular heating and cooling system inspections ensure equipment is operating efficiently. When the time is right, a walk and talk with the property owner is a great opportunity to point this out and transform problem plantings into a profit center. Create A Simple Sketch No expensive tools are needed for this one—just a sketch pad, or graph paper, and a pencil. Identify each tree and plant grouping and look for ways to introduce a more diverse group of species. A simple tear-off pad with your company logo and contact information on it will help keep the notes you ...
