Trees

I am a tree lover. Most of all, I love oak trees, which once grew plentifully on the land around our home project. Over the years, most of our oaks were lost, first to road improvements, then to oak wilt, and finally to a new septic system. Through the years I have cherished the few remaining oaks, so when I began designing the new house, preserving my favorite swinging tree became an important focus for me. The placement of the structure on the lot started with the assumption that the tree would not be sacrificed. Demolition and construction procedures were devised to protect its root system, as well as ensuring that the roof was not too close to overhanging branches.

Because oak is a slow-growing species, and the threat of another infestation of oak wilt always looms on the horizon, those oaks were replaced with a variety of trees over the past 50 years. Sometime into the planning of our home we realized that the green ash trees, planted as seedlings in the 60s or early 70s to replace the oaks, and now towering at 60 feet in height, were threatened by the arrival in the Twin Cities of the emerald ash borer. We recently moved from a community where this invasive pest devastated the ash population of the city and state, so we knew that the ash trees on the site would soon be an ash borer target, as well. I am never eager to remove a tree, but waiting for the emerald ash borer to kill the trees did not seem like a reasonable option.

Access issues meant that the future removal of large ash trees from the back yard would have threatened the oak I wanted so much to preserve. We were pretty sure it was only a matter of time until the ash trees would have to go, so we made the decision to remove them at the time of demolition of the old house. These trees are being milled into lumber for flooring and cabinets for the new house. In June, 2013, a huge storm with high winds took down thousands of trees in the Twin Cities. A giant cottonwood came down and took out 12 trees in the little woods between our house and the next door neighbor. Eight of them were black cherry. Those trees have also been harvested for use in cabinetry.

In all, we removed 17 trees plus the cherry in the woods. Most of them (10) were ash. All but one of the rest, were either damaged in the storm, or diseased and at the end of their lives. Only one healthy tree, a basswood planted as a sapling in the mid-60s, was removed to provide adequate solar exposure for photovoltaic panels on the roof.

The lost trees in the yard and in the woods will be replaced with native species of trees and shrubs that should thrive in our climate and soil type. In the meantime, invasive buckthorn will be removed. We’ve already pulled some, and will keep a vigilant watch until they are eradicated. I still have much research to do to determine exactly what we will plant, but I already plan to reintroduce shrubs and wildflowers that grew in the woods when I was a child.