Tree Society Helping the Public Get to the Roots of the Problem

Brea resident Dorothy Gowetski lives in a development of large, single-family homes with a pool, sculpture garden, tennis courts and 270 trees--and she was shocked to discover recently that management was about to top them off.

Fearing for their survival, Gowetski didn’t know where to turn to preserve the jacaranda, eucalyptus and sycamore trees that management planned to top off until she saw a small newspaper ad for the Orange County Trees Society.

The group referred Gowetski to longtime society member and arborist Alden Kelley. He met with the development’s management and homeowners association to explain how topping off trees destroys them.

It was one way the 7-year-old tree society educates Orange County residents about saving trees through proper maintenance and planting.

“People take it for granted that a tree will live no matter what you do,” said Nancy Bruland, president of the society. “If people were aware from the county level to the state level about how much maintaining trees and planting the appropriate trees can save money, it would hold more importance in the community.”

The 50 volunteers in the group range from concerned homeowners to landscapers, retired teachers and park rangers.

For Shirley Kirkpatrick, vice president of the society, interest in saving trees began with a struggle in her community in 1979. She learned that the county had started chopping down 600 sycamore trees, a third of the trees in Rossmoor, an unincorporated part of the county.

Extensive Root Systems

The trees had grown to nearly 80 feet tall, and their extensive root systems could crack sidewalks. A year later, as a result of her success, Kirkpatrick joined forces with other residents to form the tree society.

The group presented research “to show that it was not only environmentally sound, but more cost-effective to root-prune the trees,” she said. That involves pruning the roots along the sidewalk with a circular saw and installing a plastic shield to encourage the roots to grow down, she said. County officials were convinced.

Since the Rossmoor battle, said Bill Reiter, the county’s manager of public works, “our policy is to save as many trees as possible.”

Bill Tidwell, another public works official, said that now “we don’t remove trees just because people want them removed. We evaluate the value of the tree. If the tree is drastically out of place, we have to do something about it.”

But Kelley, who has a doctorate in plant morphology, said “mispractice and malpractice” in tree care are common in the county because people are “dreadfully ignorant.” “Since World War I, the influx of people and the development in California has led to a lot of unwise use of trees,” he said. “Only in the last three or four years have the effects started bringing the problems home to people.”

Pruning Can Kill Trees

For example, he said, trees planted in the wrong places can crack sidewalks, and pruning trees year after year can kill them.

To help people learn about tree care, the society offers a certificate program in urban forestry. The program, which is taught at the University of California Co-operative Extension in Anaheim, is aimed at homeowners, landscapers, tree trimmers and county officials, among others.

The society began the program in 1980 with grants from the state Department of Forestry, said Bruland. That aid ended in 1983, but the society has received a small grant from the Tree People, a group based in Los Angeles.

Fullerton City Council member Molly McClanahan said she took the certificate program because she appreciated trees but did not have the background to evaluate a city tree maintenance policy.

“Most of the people we reach,” Bruland said, “are going to take what they learn back to their jobs or homeowners’ association.”

Tidwell and eight of the 12 members of the county tree crew also took the course. But the small crew must maintain 200,000 trees, and they have jurisdiction only over unincorporated areas.

Bruland said the tree society wants to reach more people before it’s too late.

“Some people say it’s going to be concrete county instead of Orange County,” she said. “They are bulldozing history when they bulldoze trees.”