There is a tree that I drive past on my way to work. I call it my tree, but that’s a stretch and calling it a tree isn’t much better. A green blob would be a more accurate description – a blob maybe 4m tall, khaki in colour with a crusty beige brown trunk. Hardly ...
Not only are we surrounded by hollow things that don’t fall down, but many of the hollow things that don’t fall down have holes in them too. Who would have thought?
New Zealand finds itself in a fascinating point of arboricultural time
When I was a young horticulturalist each and every soils teacher seemed to say something along the lines of ‘soil is soil and dirt is what you get under your fingernails’, some of them would go on to say that they were taught that, but it ‘reflected their sediments exactly’ – and they wondered why ...
I have a wisteria that grows and grows, but where it goes nobody knows. I train it and shape it to follow a plan but it still it grows to follow its nose… and I don’t know why. As a self-respecting arborist, I dislike vines – with the exception of grapevines and hops, but I ...
For the past few months I have been writing pruning specifications, or more correctly I have been removing pruning specifications. I’d love to say it’s a less-is-more situation, but I’ve actually been writing more to inform the reader of less – why less is good. Arboricultural pruning specifications; cleaning, thinning, lifting, seem to date back ...
I bet builders hate home-renovation shows. They must cringe as DIY celebrities Buff and Fluff [skills not included] randomly wave power tools around with seeming disregard to the rules and regulations that professionals must comply with. I also cringe at home-renovation shows. My issue comes not from Buff and Fluff [taste optional] creating indoor-outdoor toilet ...
As I write this, I’m flying back from the UK after attending the Arboricultural Association’s annual conference; Soil and Trees. It was a fantastic conference, well worth the effort and it was truly an honour to be able to speak at it. Soil compaction was a reoccurring theme, and so it should have been. ...
I love the fact that trees don’t read books and that the laws of nature don’t always seem to apply to nature. I love this, and to serve as a constant reminder I have my very own illiterate disobedient tree in my backyard. It is a cutting from an old apple tree. The parent tree ...