Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmannii) at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanical Garden, Arcadia, California. Photo: Tracie Hall CC BY 2.0
The concept of “right tree, right place” is familiar to arborists, landscape architects, and city planners. At their best, urban forests carefully balance the needs and desires of humans for shade, beauty, and easy care with environmental conditions at a given site, such as high and low temperatures, average rainfall, and soil depth and quality. Achieving synergy between these two sets of requirements is both a science and an art, and requires access to (and knowledge of) a sufficiently broad selection of commercially available tree species.
A changing climate, drought, pests, and pollution are taking a toll on urban trees. Photo: courtesy of TreePeople
As evidenced by the unprecedented drought in California from 2012 to 2016, the environmental conditions we have come to expect may not be the environmental conditions we face in the future. Climate change is no longer a distant threat—it is ...
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Voices of the West; New Science on Life in the Garden by Frederique Lavoipierre
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