Around the Garden

One man’s meat is another man’s poison, goes the old saw. Something like that can be said for rain and gardens. My garden has never grown more vigorously than this year. I use “my garden” loosely – including the experimental American chestnut orchard that I help maintain on city property.

Many of the chestnut trees planted in May of 2010 are nearly five feet tall – started from seed.

This year’s planting went in May 1st, and several of those trees are 15 inches tall already.

So far this month, rainfall is just about double the DEP’s average prediction for all of June. Twelve out of the first 24 days produced measurable rainfall, and more is in the forecast.

While my trees planted in rocky clay have thrived, other trees are looking pretty stressed. Around Middletown streets, a group of four Honey locusts in front of It’s Only Natural (the market, not the restaurant) offer up a lesson in what can go wrong with urban trees. The two on either end are sparse, with several dead branches each. In the middle, two very full trees have bent over nearly double. I sent pictures and a description of these to the chief pathologist at the CT Agricultural Experiment Station; the tentative diagnosis was anoxia, (oxygen deprivation) caused by water-logged soil.

Sadly, many of the trees at Melilli Plaza are looking worse for wear as well. One of the two London plane trees from the original 1975 planting is dying from the top down, a typical result of root injury. None of the new London planes planted last fall appears to be healthy – possibly the result of being planted too deeply.

Hope springs eternal, however, and this past week, the Middletown Urban Forestry Commission began planting a nursery for future street trees. Approximately 150 native trees were potted up and heeled into a long trench, where they will grow for about two years. At least one more increase in pot size will be needed before these trees become large enough to survive as urban trees.

Because street trees have so many stresses – salt, limited root space, lack of water, careless drivers and thoughtless passers-by – the new trend for urban tree planting is something called “set-back planting.” These are trees planted by the municipality on residential property, rather than in what some call the “hell strip” between sidewalk and street. An agreement between the city and the homeowner states that the homeowner will make sure the tree or trees are watered and protected. In return, the city agrees to maintain the tree as needed, with the knowledge that these trees will likely have a much better future than they would if planted in the “hell strip.”

The Urban Forestry Commission received a grant in 2010 to plant a group of sugar maples to replace many maples that had been removed in recent years. With luck and favorable weather, many more will be planted in coming years.