Focus — Embracing Landscape Design Challenges
How to Preserve Mature Spe By Heather Prince
We have an innate connection
to trees and creating, installing, editing, and maintaining landscapes often involves their keeping and care. Established neighborhoods usually come with a mature tree canopy that not only provides cooling shade, but grounds the homes in the neighborhood and provides unique personality to our built spaces. How do we preserve trees when called in to craft a landscape design? What are some proven techniques to protect treasured trees and keep them healthy? We spoke to Craig Bergmann, RLA, ASLA owner and principal at Craig Bergmann Landscape Design. An award-winning landscape architect, Bergmann and his team work with many properties that feature mature trees on sites with home building projects and landscape renovations.
Why keep mature trees?
“Well, there is nothing that ages a new project better than mature trees,” commented Bergmann. “This said, the shade provided often helps establish new plantings within this shelter and often increases wildlife habitat. It typically is
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the mature evergreen tree that shelters cardinals and mourning doves that so many of us enjoy in our landscapes. If kept healthy and the landscape is developed with the long-term health in mind of mature trees on new project sites, a symbiotic relationship between old and new plantings can be accomplished.” Large trees also offer a greater amount of ecosystem services including absorbing stormwater, sequestering carbon, cooling the atmosphere and mitigating heat islands, improving air quality, and providing homes for wildlife such as bees, butterflies, and birds. The ideal situation is for the landscape team to be involved in pre-construction plans from the beginning. This ensures that trees may be protected, buildings could be sited to respond to trees and garden views, and construction scheduling is designed to work for all parties involved. “The major challenge is to educate all members of the construction project team of the program to work on the tree’s behalf and not for just the humans involved,” observed Bergmann. “Mature trees like mature humans resist change, therefore the true landscape professional needs to own the protection of the tree
The Landscape Contractor July 2021
