Raise the Hammer

Correct about best practices for large holes... However, for Barton's situation, it's different.

">>actually, it's the other way around with the trees. Iron grates kill the trees. Check out the trees downtown where the trunks have literally been sliced by the grates as the trees grew too big for the small steel hole."

This could be true, but this is not applicable for the Barton trees at all. The trunk hasn't grown big enough to be sliced by the iron grates.

There are poorly designed iron grates, but there are also 100 year old urban trees still growing out of their original iron grates. It's a matter of making sure the diameter of the hole is big enough to project many decades into the future.

When I visit some places like Boston, I see old grates with big hole and huge trees.

The rubber covers that were installed at Barton are the non-biodegradable non-permeable type. Go there next time after a massive torrent rainstorm then peel up the rubber, and you'll see the bone-dryness. Sure, sure, all the nouveaux stuff like compostable plastic bags to other things, but the reality is that they lower the quality of compost compared to avoiding them. This is just another one of them. YUCK.

It's easier for city municipalities to make mistakes with rubber covers than with metal grates. I'd almost rather see a tree live to 50 years and then die from iron grate choke then; rather than see trees die after 5 years and get replaced only once every 10 years, resulting in a stubby half of the time that a typical city does not bother replacing for many years.

My spouse has a 2015 Hamilton Trillium Award winning garden, and we've talked to a bunch of horticulturists has been talked to.

While I agree with you generally, this is completely inapplicable to Barton, given (A) metal grate hole isn't limiting factor, and (B) the rubber they chose is the wrong impermeable type; necessitating a fix anyway. Tiny metal grates, yes, are a pet peeve of mine. But the barton grates are fairly decent sized and already automatically permits longer-than-worldwide-municipal-average urban tree life.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-08-21 22:46:41