Putting Down New, Old Roots
The old oak tree looked grateful enough.
Stuffed into a giant wooden planter, it resembled a two-story geranium more than a centuries-old coastal oak. Its branches were pruned and rather bare, it was hooked up to two heavy-duty tractors, and it was surrounded by humans speculating on its chances for survival.
Still, it was alive.
“Big Daddy,” as its developer-owners dubbed it, was about to be moved 50 feet, from its natural location on a knoll off Mulholland Highway and Old Topanga Canyon Road downhill to the entrance of a new subdivision called “The Crest of Calabasas.”
Thirty-four custom homes are planned--on half-acre estate lots ranging in price from $500,000 to $1 million--and Big Daddy is in the way of their main entry road.
Luckily for Big Daddy, developers Earl and Jody Sherman, an affable couple with a thing for trees, decided to relocate it to The Crest’s entrance instead of cutting it down.
The Shermans also invited about 50 friends, business associates and reporters to celebrate their environmental sensitivity and publicize their real estate project at a catered tree-moving ceremony.
Although the development required moving 1 million cubic yards of earth, about half of The Crest’s 45 acres will remain open space, more than 100 trees will be preserved in their natural state and about a dozen--Big Daddy is the biggest--will be moved rather than cut down, Jody Sherman said.
“We like to be considered environmental developers because we’ve never built to the maximum,” Jody Sherman said.
As laborers readied Big Daddy for the move, guests helped themselves to fresh orange juice, coffee, pastries and fruit from an umbrella-shaded buffet table. Bankers, accountants and political aides all mingled politely, inevitably wandering over to the tree to marvel at its size and the apparatus required for its move.
The process was to be done “Egyptian-style,” meaning that tree movers would slide the coastal oak down greased wooden planks, much like laborers moved the stones for the pyramids.
To prepare the tree for the move and help it avoid shock, movers months ago scaled back its branches and roots by hand, then painstakingly constructed an 18-foot Douglas fir box around the remaining root ball. To install the bottom of the planter, according to arborist John Mote, workers had to tunnel underneath, shoring up the earth around them like miners.
The move cost $40,000 to $50,000, Mote and the Shermans said. When The Crest is complete, Big Daddy will stand beside a guarded gate, an art nouveau panel of trees to be made from the recycled chrome fenders of classic cars.
Mote, a tree pruner’s son, said Big Daddy’s roots once spread to a radius of 210 feet before being pruned nearly 80%.
The developers’ press release said the tree was nearly 800 years old and weighed more than 180 tons--”more than 105 Cadillacs at 3,400 pounds each for the current El Dorado.” However, Mote estimated the tree to be 300 to 400 years old and its weight closer to 120 tons.
The equivalent of only 70 Cadillacs, but around 120 Honda Civics.
“The best thing for a tree is to leave it alone,” Mote said. “But when faced with demolition and replacing it with smaller trees, I think relocation is a viable alternative.”
The Shermans summoned their guests to brief speeches. The brightest green in sight was an astroturf carpet beneath plastic chairs.
Behind a small stage and a large sign advertising The Crest, a bulldozer moved back and forth on a barren hillside.
‘We feel very fortunate to be doing our small bit to save part of our heritage,” Jody Sherman told the gathering.
“Earl and I were just absolutely scared stiff the tree wouldn’t make it,” she said, adding that the tree sprouted new growth during its two-month planter phase and had a 95% chance of survival.
A local minister led the group in a prayer for American troops in the Persian Gulf. Jody Sherman thanked the project’s construction lender, engineers, architect, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, state Sen. Ed Davis, Fox TV, the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, and the Rotary Club.
The ceremony culminated with a performance by two of Jody Sherman’s friends who sang a selection of tunes devoted to nature and trees. “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” became:
Tie a big green ribbon round the old oak tree,
They’ve been here so long, they’re a sight to see.
We’ve got to save or move them, those grand old oak trees,
We’ll not take them down, they’ll still be around,
Just you wait and see.
Those towering, shapely, stately Calabasas old oak trees.
The women sang “the hills are alive with the sound of music ,” while a bulldozer crawled persistently across the future estates.
They also sang, “Edelweiss,” the harmony sweet at the words “blossom of snow may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow forever. “
For a moment, it looked like Big Daddy’s branches were nodding in agreement. But it was only the move making the tree bob slightly as it was pulled down the hill.
