Thomas MacMillan Photo
Ozyck inspects a “tortured” tree.
As new trees take root in ample plots of grass by the Westville cemetery, others down Route 63 are being “entombed” in concrete “coffins” that, in the eyes of one urban forester, will ensure their lives are nasty, brutish and short.
Chris Ozyck, greenspace manager for the Urban Resources Initiative (URI), made that appraisal during a recent trip down Whalley Avenue.
He started first by the Westville Cemetery, where URI put 40 new oaks and crabapples into the ground three weeks ago. Those trees are destined for long healthy lives, he said.
Ozyck then drove less than a mile down Whalley Avenue, where a contractor for the state Department of Transportation (DOT) has been busy putting in dozens of trees along the newly overhauled Route 63. Ozyck pointed out a wide variety of errors in both the design and execution of the tree-planting there. He said the young trees are destined for a brief, tortured existence thanks in part to a lack of soil volume, being planted too close together in rocky unforgiving soil, and being surrounded by stifling asphalt and concrete.
Delois Barnes, a transportation landscape designer with the DOT, said the trees will be fine and that they actually have more room for their roots than trees in other cities. Asked one by one about the concerns Ozyck named, she said they were unfounded.
Ozyck said the overall premise of the work on Route 63 is off base. It’s too focused on auto traffic, with little consideration for the needs of pedestrians walking on the street, like shade and greenery.
Such criticisms have been with the Route 63 project from the start. Several years ago, neighbors organized themselves in opposition to the plan. They sought traffic-calming measures and pedestrian improvements, but their efforts were largely unsuccessful. In one concession, a DOT official cited planned “extensive plantings” as a traffic-calming measure that will make the area more “visually appealing.” He made those comments at the outset of the work, two years ago.
Two years later, the “extensive plantings” seem to be little more than window dressing, Ozyck said. The trees that manage to survive will be stunted and scraggly, he predicted, doing little to cool the street or make it more attractive, he said.
Trees For The Cemetery
On a sunny recent afternoon, Ozyck turned up at the Westville Cemetery wearing steel-toe boots, shorts, and a neon-green safety vest. His visit to Whalley Avenue began with a success story about the new trees planted there, by the organization he works for.
URI chose to plant oaks in the area. It’s “a good urban tree” that will be able to handle the pollution and sun exposure that comes with life next to a busy state road, Ozyck said. An oak living as a “street tree” will last over 100 years, he said.
Ozyck and a Norway maple.
Along the grassy median on the north side of Whalley, URI planted red and scarlet oaks, which will grow up and out, creating a canopy over the sidewalk, Ozyck said. They’ll do better than the couple of maples nearby, Ozyck said. He pointed out a couple stunted and scraggly specimens nearby, crowned by dead limbs. Just like people, trees are morse susceptible to disease when they’re stressed, Ozyck said. The Norway maples, an invasive species not suited for street life, are so stressed they no longer have the energy needed for their top branches, he said.
Farther down Whalley towards Jewell Street, Ozyck pointed out where URI has put in English oaks. The trees were selected in consultation with Rabbi Eli Greer with the Yeshiva of New Haven Synagogue and the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven. Since Jews who are part of the Kohanim are made impure by walking under the canopy of trees, URI planted the fastigious English oaks which will grow like pillars, without spreading out much, Ozyck said.
A “donut.”
Each recently planted tree featured a “donut” of mulch at its base. The basin creates a reservoir for watering, it keeps the soil temperature moderate, and it keeps mowers and weed whackers away, Ozyck said.
Each tree was also flanked by a pair of long wooden stakes to protect it from opening car doors and to indicate that it is a young tree that should be protected. The trees were not wired to the stakes, as that kind of support has been show to weaken root development, Ozyck said. One tree that had been tilting was held loosely by “arbor tape” looped around a stake.
Ozyck said URI never plants trees without lining up “stewardship,” people who will take on the task of watering young trees and ensure they are healthy.
Cemetery For The Trees
After touring the cemetery trees, Ozyck jumped in his big maroon pickup with his mixed-breed rescue dog and headed to the corner of Emerson Street and Whalley Avenue, where he parked in the shade of an auto-repair garage.
As he began to walk up Whalley, Ozyck immediately noticed problems with the newly planted crabapple trees there. The saplings have been wedged into narrow, 5 feet by 30 inch holes in otherwise unbroken concrete between the sidewalk and the road. The concrete has been given a surface treatment to make it look like bricks, but unlike bricks, it won’t let water through the soil below.
Ozyck said trees will struggle to survive after being planted in such “coffins.”
A “coffin.”
Trees need to be surrounded by a sufficient area of permeable ground to let the roots breathe. While tree leaves take in CO2 and give off oxygen, the roots do the opposite, taking in oxygen and giving off carbon dioxide, Ozyck said. But they can’t do that properly if they’re surrounded by concrete.
Barnes, the DOT designer, said later that the trees have plots that are 3 feet by 5 feet, which is larger than the 3 feet by 3 feet that’s the DOT standard. That standard has worked fine for trees in similar situations elsewhere in the state, she said, so the Whalley trees should be fine. “We tried to negotiate the most space we can,” she said.
The trees come with a one-year warranty from the contractor, who will be monitoring and watering them, Barnes said.
Ozyck said the concrete surrounding the trees creates a “heat island” effect, reflecting heat from the sun back to the tree and adding further stress.
What’s more, the trees have been wired tightly to stakes. Ozyck said that’s an out-of-date, discredited planting practice, which can lead to “girdling,” where the bark of a tree is damaged in a circle around the trunk. Tight wiring, unlike arbor tape, can also prevent the tree from growing.
The trees also don’t have the “donut” of mulch. So on top of a lack of permeable surface area from which to draw moisture, the surface area that exists is not arranged to prevent the water from simply running off, Ozyck said. Trees that are lucky will be able to thread a root under the sidewalk to some open greenery where they can get water. But their dependence on that root will cause it to grow and eventually, if the root finds a crack in the sidewalk, buckle the walkway, he predicted.
Walking farther down Whalley, Ozyck noted that the ground around trees where concrete has not yet been poured is not proper soil, but impacted “aggregate,” a dense mixture of gravel and sand and dirt. That’s going to make life even harder for the trees, he said.
Barnes said that dirt is not what’s underneath the trees. That dirt is put in just to stabilize the road and curbs. It’s dug out and replaced by good topsoil before trees are put in, she said.
As he proceeded down the street, Ozyck noticed problem after problem. Many of the trees are parked hard up against the street, which has a very narrow shoulder. They’re destined to be hit by passing trucks, which will eventually shear and shape them lopsided. Meanwhile, because they’re planted in a median of less than three feet between the sidewalk and the street, the trees will need to be pruned on the sidewalk side to make way for pedestrians. Pruning will stunt them further and make them even more susceptible to disease, Ozyck said.
“These trees are going to have a hard life,” Ozyck said.
Barnes said the trees will be pruned to prevent their limbs from being hit by passing vehicles.
In front of the CVS near Dayton Street, Ozyck suggested the DOT had made a poor choice by planting crabapples and cherry trees. While they are a hardy tree that won’t grow high enough to interfere with powerlines, they’ll stay just low enough to block the sight of business signs for drivers on Whalley. And they won’t provide a canopy to mitigate the “heat island” effect.
“This is just going to make the area feel hot,” he said.
Farther down Whalley, near the West River Open Space, Ozyck noted the DOT had planted some London Plain trees. Another bad choice, since they’re susceptible to anthracnose. “We don’t plant them anymore,” he said. Sure enough, he noted that the blight has already set in on some of the trees. “They’ll struggle too.”
Ozyck also pointed out where oak trees had been planted far too closely together. “They’re overplanted for big trees,” he said. “No one would ever plant two oaks eight feet apart.”
Ozyck speculated that the overplanting was a purposeful redundancy measure. “Some will live, some will die. That’s part of the strategy.”
Barnes said that’s not the case. “We’re replacing the forest we took down there,” she said. The trees have enough room to grow and all survive, she said.
Kneeling by several trees, Ozyck noticed that the burlap sacks around the root balls had not been removed prior to planting. That’s not a good practice either, he said. The burlap wicks moisture away from the roots and to the surface where it evaporates, depriving the plant of needed hydration, he said.
Many trees were also planted inside the wire baskets used for pre-planting transportation, Ozyck discovered. That’s another bad idea, because it prevents the roots from growing out to find nourishment. The wire baskets should have been cut away before the trees were put into the ground, he said.
“These are tortured trees,” Ozyck said. They’ll be lucky to live five years at the most, he said.
Barnes said the contractor will be doubling back to roll down the burlap sacks and trim away the baskets on the planted trees.
Across from the Top Kat laundromat, Ozyck pointed out another tree that was already showing signs of blight. The leaves were withered and shriveled, and the trunk was cracked where the cables pulled it.
Back on the north side of Whalley, Ozyck examined some hybrid flowering dogwoods near a tanning parlor. A bad choice for an area with no shade, he said. The species usually grows at the edge of woods, where it can be sheltered by larger trees, he said. It won’t last three years on Whalley, and that’s if someone takes patient care of it, he said.
“I don’t think I would last a day standing out here,” Ozyck said, as the sun beat down, amplified by the black asphalt all around.
At the corner of Ramsdell and Whalley, Ozyck wandered through a couple dozen recently planted trees. “They really hedged their bets here,” he said. “This likes dry, this likes wet.”
Across Ramsdell, Middlebury-based contractors were planting red maples and dogwoods. After speaking with DOT, the woman who owns the company said she lacks permission to make comments for an article.
As Ozyck walked back to his truck, he talked about what the DOT could still do to help the trees survive. Number one, the tree plots should be widened by several feet to allow more room for roots and more permeable surface. The DOT could also cut into the sidewalk around each tree to create more room, he said. The city standard is four by eight feet of ground space for new trees, he said.
But retroactive work can only do so much to mitigate a deeply flawed design, he said. He pointed out several areas where the sidewalk could have been moved farther from the street (as in photo), to create a wider median for the trees. Or the DOT could have created a four-foot planting median on one side of the street, rather than two two-foot strips on each side. That would have given the trees more of a chance, Ozyck said.
Whalley and Emerson, facing east.
As he neared the corner of Emerson Street, where Whalley is again bordered by wide grassy medians where URI planted trees a couple years ago, Ozyck pointed out the immediate difference. The air was cooler and the leafy streetscapes provided a welcome relief from the concrete corridor he had left behind.
Whalley and Emerson, facing west.
Where there is no dedicated on-street parking lane and traffic moves directly next to the sidewalk, it is best to provide a planter strip of 6-8 feet to provide a decent buffer for pedestrians, and provide space for trees to fully mature.
With a parking lane the planter strip width can be reduced to 4-6 feet. 3 feet is pretty bad.