To This Activist, Every Day Is Arbor Day

Charlie Everett chronicles life and death in Orange County.

But the stories he writes as editor of Tree Talk, the newsletter of the Tree Society of Orange County, are mostly upbeat these days.

Tree-plantings are on the rise, while tree removals are often vigorously opposed by society members, who work in concert with local tree-preservation groups and an often outraged public.

Everett, 72, lives in a tree-shrouded home in the hills of northeast Fullerton. A retired technical editor for Chevron Corp., he has spent the last decade writing passionately about the county’s trees in Tree Talk, a newsletter sent to 225 Tree Society members and community leaders.

In the last bimonthly newsletter, Everett wrote about a 90-year-old ficus in Orange that was moved last May to make way for a new supermarket. The tree, planted by pioneer rancher Thomas Flippen, is about 100 feet tall, weighs 150 tons and has a six-foot root ball.

“The developers said they were going to have to cut the tree down, so the neighborhood got up in arms and asked if there was any way to preserve the tree. The developers said, ‘That tree is huge. It’s going to cost a lot of money if we try to preserve that tree.’ But eventually, they did come up with the money,” Everett said.

It cost about $100,000 to move the tree, all of 150 feet, to the edge of Chapman Avenue.

“No one knows yet whether it’s going to survive the move, but at least the community cared enough to try and protect this beautiful tree.”

Orange County residents increasingly care about their trees, but local municipalities have balanced tight budgets in part during the last few years by reducing or eliminating periodic tree maintenance.

“When the cities run low on money, they tend to cut back on tree care. They don’t prune them when they should, and they tend to over-prune them when they do. They think, ‘Well, a little pruning is good, so a lot of pruning must be better.’ So they cut all the leaves off, and the tree is ruined. It’ll never be a good tree again.

“Trees tend to send out these multiple branches, right out from the ends of where they’re pruned. So when big limbs are cut off, those shoots are never as strong. They’re weakly attached and apt to break off. The tree will have these big, bunchy branches and never again have that nice, lacy look.”

Everett is encouraged that more residential developers understand that tree-lined neighborhoods increase property values. It wasn’t always that way in Orange County, he said.

“Orange County isn’t noted for its trees. In the early days, there were very few trees. It was grazing land, mainly for sheep. There was a lot of wild mustard but not many trees. There were a few sycamores and oaks, here and there.

“When people started moving in, they planted eucalyptus windbreaks and California pepper trees. In the early days, the ground water was quite high in the county, and it was too wet for many trees to survive. You could dig down with a shovel and find water almost anyplace. It was difficult to find a place to put a cemetery. But the water table began to drop in the early 1900s as people grew crops. The trees could survive better.”

Eucalyptus trees were so well-suited to the area that some turn-of-the-century entrepreneurs envisioned a thriving Orange County furniture industry, Everett said.

“The eucalyptus would just grow like mad. Only one little problem: Eucalyptus isn’t much good for furniture. So it became the firewood of choice.”

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In the building boom after World War II, many of the county’s trees were cut down to make way for development, Everett said. The Tree Society, which dates to the 1970s, was founded to promote tree-planting and help stop the development-inspired deforestation of the county. Some 474 trees were planted this year in conjunction with the society’s tree-planting programs.

“The population was growing rapidly, and we could see that the trees were falling behind,” he said.

Though trees will always be threatened by development and neglect, Everett is encouraged by efforts in cities such as Anaheim, where the TreePower program has sponsored the planting of nearly 8,000 trees since 1992. To encourage tree-planting, the city gives residents up to three free trees from an approved list.

“They recognized early on the value of trees in reducing the mean temperature in the area. They’re very conscious of air-conditioning costs.

“Trees are one of the key things in a civilized society, in keeping life good. In some of these countries where they’ve cut down all their trees, it actually changes the climate. It becomes more arid as a result, and it becomes harder to support their population. It’s a lesson worth considering. If we’re going to have a burgeoning human population, we’d better have a burgeoning tree population too.”

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Profile: Charlie Everett

Age: 72

Hometown: Garden Grove

Residence: Fullerton

Family: Wife, Bernadine; two children

Education: Attended Utah State Agricultural College; bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Orange County State College (now Cal State Fullerton)

Background: Served in the U.S. Army overseas during World War II, joined Chevron Corp. as a lab technician, 1952-67; Chevron technical editor, 1967-85; editor of Chevron Oil Field Research division newsletter, 1975 to retirement in 1985; editor of Tree Talk, the newsletter of the Tree Society of Orange County, since 1987; fund-raising activities to support tree-plantings and education programs throughout Orange County

On tree-planting: “As the forests are diminishing, we’ve got to have more trees somewhere to compensate for this, to keep the atmosphere clean. Tree-planting is another way to do it; to create urban forests.”

Source: Charlie Everett; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times