Big trees, big challenges...

By Jon van den Heever

I am on a big landscaping site on a very expensive piece of real estate where a very large and expensive holiday house is being built for a very wealthy owner, overlooking Robberg Beach in Plettenberg Bay. Three large coastal coral trees, two slightly smaller than the other, are being offloaded for strategic placement on the site. This requires a large crane truck which is costing a large amount per hour.

The conference.

I think it’s the first time I have had to wear a hard-hat, put in my hands by Charles Reitz, so this is obviously an important job on a big building site (there are about 20 bricklayers alone) and Charles, his landscape designer Wendy Sanderson-Smith and site manager Michael Strickland are all wearing looks which show a combination of excitement and concern. They have been planning and working very hard from an early hour in a demanding business.

Kasey leads the operation.

One of the big concerns is the maximum reach of the crane, which is going to be needed in order to hoist the big coral tree into position across the edge of the building under construction.

The strain is showing. Wendy lights a cigarette and Michael lights his pipe. Then quick as a flash Wendy is up on a vantage point, offering advice which obviously comes from years of study and experience. Later, she takes me on a quick tour of the site office and the building drawings all over the walls. She obviously knows what she’s looking at and tells me without a hint of irritation that her entire apartment, apart from one chair, is covered with similar drawings. She is dedicated, as are Charles and Michael. 

The three trees have to be located in exactly the right positions, marrying their natural prerequisite with the soil profile, and for the exact needs of the client. Kasey Voges, the expert from Trees South Africa – a remarkable company which supplies full grown trees – who has supervised the offloading by the crane truck, is huddled with Charles and Michael near the spot where a very tall tree has to be put in the ground, but it’s an impossibly steep spot, and, remember, this is all dune sand (with a lot of thick bush which will hopefully bolster the tree).

When asked if all this is sustainable, (his landscape division is called SustainaScapes) Charles replies: “If this area received more rainfall, this is a highly probable type of vegetation that would be found here.”  

Ideas are bounced around, compared and combined, doubted and then reinstated. Eventually it’s time to go – until the big moment comes…

Charles and Wendy.

A few days later… The crane truck is back and the largest of the three coral trees is being manoeuvred into its hole, thanks to Kasey’s unwavering supervision, the crane operator’s skill and a team of alert men from TSA cleverly erecting a slipway of timber and steel while an RTC man operates a winch which moves the tree towards its destination centimetre by centimetre. Charles and Wendy have again jumped up onto their vantage point, while Michael is down with the men.

Eventually it’s time to leave the site again, but I’m going to be right back, so I walk off with one of the builder’s stock hard-hats with the word Visitor across the front still on my head. One of his men, who looks as though he carries some rank, stops me before I can start my car. “Are you coming back?” he inquires somewhat sternly. Of course, I reassure him, I wouldn’t fail to come back. OK, he’s happy with that, so I can go.

When I return the trees are in place. What a miracle. Not only the coral trees, but a nine-metre tall strelitzia has been placed at the spot where the earnest conference took place, in a neat sandbagged hole, no problem.

These guys are good, hey, very good.

To be continued …

Your beautiful garden restios do not need an army brush-cut

This is beautiful: Restios have graceful swaying stems 

with beige-brown flowering tips.

By Charles Reitz

Being a plant lover, I am disturbed to see the escalation of poor pruning of certain plant groups by garden services. The ‘neat and tidy’ idea of gardening often leads to a misperception about what is beautiful in a garden. Restios, for example, have graceful, swaying stems with beige-brown flowering tips. As the plant grows it lays down its ‘hair’ of stems, often resembling the locks of a veteran mermaid.

When a gardener feels the need to ‘lift’ the foliage off the ground there is the option of pruning only that section that is lying down and any other old, dead stems down to the basal stem, thereby leaving the plant standing upright with its natural restio look intact. Noticeable in our coastal towns is the habit of ‘chopping’ the stems (culms) at mid-point to leave it with a vase-like appearance. The younger stems then grow and protrude through the cut-line only to be chopped again by the next visit of the garden service. This ultimately leads to the death of the specimen.

This sort of vegetation management probably stems from the human’s necessity to ‘control’ their environment, but in most cases it leaves our urban areas looking unfriendly to anyone who is in the frame of mind to notice. Pruning techniques and understanding the psychological effects of vegetation in the urban environment is a subject that has had little attention since the end of the French aristocracy… and it is highly noticeable.

About restios

Restio is the name of a group of plants within the Restionaceae, although many species formerly included in the Restio genus are now classified into a number of other genera.

In common with a number of other genera in the Restionaceae, restios are widely cultivated for use as garden ornamentals because of their attractive nodular foliage. Commonly known as rushes or thatching reed, hundreds of species grown worldwide are found in South Africa. In nature, restios grow in soils ranging from rocky to marshy, and most prefer acidic soil.

These plants have long stems like reeds or grasses, and are evergreen, mostly growing in the cooler seasons. Restios bear clusters of beige-brown flowers in spring and summer.

Most restios prefer damp soil, and a good mulch of organic material and compost will prevent water from evaporating too fast. Gardeners need to ensure that the soil is well drained and that it doesn’t become waterlogged during the rainy season. Most restios prefer full sun, but some will grow well in light shaded areas.

Gardeners need to keep the plants tidy by pruning dead and damaged stems and not prune the entire ‘bush’ of stems to look like an army hairstyle! (See picture above left).

Restios like the companionship of plants that enjoy full sun or light shade. But keep the height of your restios in mind, remembering that they occupy a large space. They enjoy good air circulation, so give them room to breathe.

General sources: Wikimedia, Fairlady-Home Ideas online

Stop farming your garden with constant forking!

Is your garden service permanently doing this? You are not supposed to be 'farming' your garden!

Bury your boulders, create planting space and use low growing, soil stabilising, easily-grown plants. A layer of mulch and periodic watering are all that's necessary to maintain it. Not constant forking!

 

Know your trees: Yellowwood (podocarpus falcatus)

 

This medium to very tall tree can be found in the coastal to evergreen forests that occur from the Southern Cape to Gauteng. The leaves are dark green, often with a greyish bloom, and can be slightly sickle-shaped. They are borne on square-ridged branchlets. The round fleshy seeds, which are about 1.5 cm in diameter, are produced singly and may be found on the tree most of the year. The flaking bark of this yellowwood is the easiest way to tell Podocarpus falcatus from Podocarpus latifolius. This is one of the yellowwoods of the timber trade, the timber being highly prized and much in demand in the structural restoration of historical buildings and for fine furniture, flooring and panelling. From Everyone’s Guide to Trees of South Africa by Keith, Paul and Meg Coates Palgrave, published by CNA.

Improve your security fencing with the right mix of plants

A palisade security fence with a convenient foothold at the bottom! This shows a common problem, in this case planting thorny bushes along the fence. When the hedge is under the tree it begins to fade away. What is needed is a barrier in the form of a variety of plants, 70% thorny and 30% non-thorny, deceiving an intruder into thinking there’s a gap but then coming up against something thorny again. Also make sure that plants in shady areas get enough water otherwise there will be another weak link.

 

The urban 'topping' menace is defacing our coastal towns





Trees and plants on municipal ground which have
been cut and topped for the benefit of a neighbour’s
 sea view.

The “topping” (cutting off the top) of beautiful indigenous trees like Cape ash, Cheesewood and Milkwood for the sake of a view of the sea is a phenomenon in Plettenberg Bay and elsewhere which Charles Reitz calls “an insult to our culture”. He insists that this tragedy has been allowed to continue due to ignorance and the resulting arrogance prone to all classes of property owners.

“There should be an environmental officer in this town who reacts to the first sound of a chainsaw. There are some trees that have been topped many times by people who think the trees can simply grow back again. Eventually they cannot because they run out of energy, and as a result their shady canopy is lost, with all the birds and other creatures that depend on them. Invasive plants then thrive on the additional sunlight and take over.”

A Cheesewood Pittosporum viridiflorum which has

been repeatedly topped, providing sunshine

 to alien plants which flourish below.

This would not happen as easily as it does if the people involved employed suitably trained experts who are able to deal with large trees in a way which allows them to remain in place while also offering a “framed” view which is preferable to the “open sea view” - an obsession found all along the coast, turning potentially leafy towns and villages into monstrosities by the sea. There have even been cases where neighbours have poisoned or ring-barked trees next door. The alternative is simple cooperation between neighbours and the services of qualified tree-surgeons or arborists.

“Now it’s too late, in many cases,” laments Charles. “A lovely and sophisticated town like Plett almost spoiled because a sea view is more important than beautiful trees close to our homes. Many people doing this could be wealthy, educated folk who might complain of the lack of insight in this regard on the part of our indigenous communities. It is the result of a culture of fear – fear of vermin, fear of snakes, fear of nature.”

What is arboriculture?

 

Charles Reitz preparing to remove a palm tree from
an unsuitable position in a garden.

Arboriculture is the cultivation, management and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines and other perennial woody plants. It is both a practice and a science.

The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their environment. The practice of arboriculture includes cultural techniques such as selection, planting, training, fertilization, pest and pathogen control, pruning, shaping, and removal.

 

A person who practices or studies arboriculture can be called an arborist or an arboriculturist. A 'tree surgeon' is more typically someone who is trained in the physical maintenance and manipulation of trees and therefore more a part of the arboriculture process rather than an arborist as such.

Risk management, legal issues and aesthetic considerations have come to play prominent roles in the practice of arboriculture.

Arboriculture is primarily focused on individual woody plants and trees maintained for permanent landscape and amenity purposes, usually in gardens, parks or other populated settings, by arborists, for the enjoyment, protection, and benefit of human beings. It falls under the general umbrella of horticulture.

There is, of course, a difference between urban tree management and forest management. In this blog we are primarily concerned with urban tree management as opposed to forest tree management, although forest management can and will be dealt with as well.