Arboreal Awakening
In a city of trees, spring heralds a rhapsody of foliage and hope By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Mark Wagoner When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. When is the next best time? Now. — Chinese saying, in The Overstory, a novel by Richard Powers
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ately on walks with our rescue dog, Sprinkles, I’ve been thinking about the trees in Fisher Park, the neighborhood where my wife, Mary Leigh, and I live. Enormous willow oaks, maples, big pecan trees and Southern magnolias line our streets and yards, shading dogwoods, redbuds and crape myrtles. Thick beeches guard the park’s tributary of Buffalo Creek, and tall gums scatter walkways with their prickly, annoying balls. The trees are serene and magical. And old. A quality I share with the trees. We’re approaching the end of our natural lives, becoming unsteady and expensive to maintain. Being a 2-year-old dog, Sprinkles devotes no attention to the passage of time — the present moment suiting her just fine. She heeds the trees not at all unless a squirrel happens to scramble up one. But in the 12 years Mary Leigh and I have lived in Fisher Park, thunderstorms have brought down enormous willow oaks, one crashing on the property owner’s car and splintering a neighbor’s redbud tree. Old age has claimed splendid white oaks. Disease has laid low big maples and dogwoods. Ice storms have wreaked havoc, uprooting oaks, gums, beeches, hemlocks and ash trees and shattering magnolias in the park. Circle of life, right? What can you do? Turns out, a lot. Sally Pagliai is the owner of Studio Pagliai Landscape and Garden Design in Greensboro. A native Californian, she holds a degree in landscape architecture from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Not long ago, she was hired for a project in the Montibello neighborhood, located off Horse Pen Creek Road. “While there were strict rules about landscaping, the homeowners weren’t abiding by them — some had placed garden gnomes, whirligigs or pink flamingos in front of their houses,” Pagliai says. The homeowners’ association brought her in to review the situation and
52 O.Henry
to make recommendations for rules that would improve neighborhood aesthetics. It was a hot July day when Pagliai first visited Montibello. As she drove in, she was impressed with how attractively the entrance was landscaped with trees and shrubs. “But once I got inside the development,” she says, “it was like a moonscape. The landscape was bleached, scorched by the summer heat. There was no canopy of trees.” Pagliai knew what Montibello needed wasn’t another set of rules. What it needed was a forest. But how could she convince them? “When I was growing up in California, we used to visit Carmel,” Pagliai says. “There were all these funky little houses.” She explains that as the town grew, homeowners made the decision to preserve the trees, even ones growing in the middle of some of the streets. “Now the trees make the place unique, and those same funky little houses today are remarkably expensive,” Pagliai says. She would make an economic argument to Montibello’s homeowners, demonstrating how trees can increase home values, augmented by information about the value of trees environmentally. Trees clean the air. They significantly reduce summer temperatures in urban areas and lower electrical bills. They absorb runoff from streets and sidewalks, reducing flooding. And they’re beautiful. “When you consider their majesty, their sculptural and textural complexity,” Pagliai says, “trees represent the very best of nature.” Pagliai presented a comprehensive design plan that explained the economic and aesthetic benefits of planting hundreds of trees — evergreen and deciduous — that was reviewed by a neighborhood committee. They approved. “Montibello ended up spending more than $100,000,” Pagliai says. Trees were planted in stages at different times of year when various species enjoyed optimal chances of survival. The added benefit? The economic impact on individual homeowners was spread out over time. Improvement in property values and quality of life in the neighborhood has been profound. A more recent Pagliai project also involved the planting of hundreds of trees. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
