This Oak Tree Is Growing In the Wrong Place
QUESTION: We’ve had a “volunteer” oak tree growing in our front yard for three years and it is now 1 1/2-inches in diameter at the base and 12 to 15 feet tall. The problem is that it is only 15 inches away from the house and my husband fears that it will become a problem as it grows. Can I prune or transplant it and if not, am I allowed to remove it? I’ve heard there are strict ordinances.
--M. M., Burbank
ANSWER: It’s almost impossible to move a volunteer oak that size because they have a small but very deep root system. You can try--and this is the time to year to do so--but don’t be too hopeful. It would be much easier to start a new oak from an acorn. They shouldn’t be too hard to find since this year oaks produced a bumper crop.
Pruning will not help the problem of it being too close to the house. In gardens, coast live oaks grow very fast and get very large.
Burbank doesn’t have an oak tree ordinance but other readers should know that many cities do, including nearby Glendale and La Can~ada-Flintridge. Many communities are trying to protect native oaks, perhaps the most significant California tree and certainly one of the most majestic. Ordinances typically cover the evergreen coast live oak, mesa oak and scrub oak as well as the deciduous valley oak and black oak. The coast live oak is the most common and it is probably the oak you described.
Most ordinances don’t cover young oaks, however. The Los Angeles County ordinance (governing unincorporated county areas, but used by some cities as well) regulates oaks with a diameter of more than eight inches, measured 4 1/2 feet above the ground. On oaks larger than this, you can’t even remove limbs larger than 2 inches in diameter without a permit (unless the branch is dead).
Permits are also required if you plan to build near it, pave or trench within five feet of the “dripline” (the very edge of the tree’s foliage), or spray it with “toxic chemicals.”
To get a permit for unincorporated L.A. County areas, call the Department of Regional Planning’s Land Development Coordinating Center at (213) 974-6411. The permit process is not cheap. A permit for one oak at a single-family residence is about $450 and since this volunteer oak is clearly in the wrong place, I’d remove it quickly and plant another in a more appropriate spot.
‘Urban Warming’ Cuts Down on Apricot Haul Q: We have an apricot tree that is more than 20 years old and every year for the past seven years, we only get one or two apricots. How can we get more?
--W. M., Torrance
A: Lots of gardeners are asking this about their apricots and the answer is that the climate has changed in urban areas of Southern California, and you probably can’t get more apricots. Call it “urban warming.” The more developed an area becomes, the warmer it gets.
You might notice this winter that while very few low temperature records are broken nowadays, record highs seem to be set every few weeks. People and cars, but especially paving and buildings, add enough stored and generated heat to raise the nighttime lows a good 10 degrees, which means the apricots, always marginal here, are not getting enough cold nights to make fruit buds. It’s possible, especially near the coast, that apricots are a thing of the past.
It’s a handsome tree however, even without fruit, so you might keep it as a shade tree, though apricots are not long-lived and a 20-year-old tree is considered up in years.
Getting Lilacs to Bloom Requires a Bit of Work Q: I have a large, old lilac but it doesn’t bloom much and needs pruning. Can you tell me how?
--M. J. Reseda
A: People frequently ask if they can grow the eastern lilacs in Southern California and it seems you have succeeded. Lilacs need cold winters to thrive, but Joel Margaretten, who has grown lilacs in mild Beverly Hills and now has 50,000 bushes growing on 80 acres in the Leona Valley, (which borders the high desert near Palmdale but in the hills) says the secret is to make them go dry from late October until March. He says this forces dormancy.
During that period, he even suggests covering the ground around the lilac with sheet plastic to keep the plant dry if it rains a lot, though planting them on hillsides or on mounded soil usually keeps them dry enough if you simply don’t water during fall and winter. Begin watering deeply but infrequently in March. This might get your lilac blooming.
Ordinarily, lilacs need little pruning and tipping them back is not a good idea since flowers come on the previous year’s growth. Simply remove suckers from around the base and cut out dead wood.
To renovate really overgrown plants, Margaretten suggests removing all the suckers from outside of about a 4-foot circle with a sharp spade when the plant is dormant, then cutting the other canes to about a foot off the ground. In summer, cut out all but a dozen or so canes that are growing strongly. It will take two years for the plant to regrow and begin blooming again.
Margaretten’s huge lilac garden, incidentally, is open to the public one weekend a year. In 1997, Margaretten Park, 3750 N. Bouquet Canyon Road, Leona Valley, is open the weekend of April 12-13, from 1-5 p.m., though he suggests calling ahead in late March to check the dates: (805) 270-0580.
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