ROBERTS BLOG
All About Trees
“If the forest should disappear, civilization would become extinguished on earth. It is the duty of an enlightened community to plant trees, and to so care for them that posterity shall not suffer… ”
Joseph Decaisne (1873). French botanist
Even before the internet and televised sport there were armchair experts. When it comes to plants every man with a dog and retired lady who makes...
I began my career as a horticulturist in the late 1980’s, it wasn’t intentional, it just kind of happened. In the 90’s I left the dirt and got into...
Recently I have had cause to rue the age of the arboriculture industry here in New Zealand; rue not being word one normally would or indeed should...
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...
A journeyman is an old-school term for a worker who is skilled in a given trade, someone that had completed an apprenticeship but had not yet...
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...
New Zealand Arborists can’t prune. For some, a generic sweeping statement like that will be offensive, but some will agree. If you’re a kiwi...
This actually has nothing to do with Covid-19 or Cholera, which the title is very loosely taken from. If you cast your mind back a few months, the...
Henry Louis Mencken is famous for many things including saying; “for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong....
The Skype meeting was tedious and I found myself checking FaceBook. Checking FaceBook out of the corner of my eye; one can never look away from the...
- the control of exotic vegetation on Auckland's volcanic cones The volcanic cones of Auckland were taken from the Māori about 150 years ago; the...
Snake Oil is an old-school term for a cure-all potion, that in reality does nothing. If you are lucky the potion won’t make things worse but the...
