Tree Care Notes
Here are some of the highlights of our recent log salvage adventures. I call them “adventures” because it would be much easier to chunk the log up into firewood and throw it in the back of the truck, but who likes to take the easy road? Although salvaging the trees we cut down can sometimes be an onerous task, it is a huge honor to turn the trees folks are “throwing away” into beautiful pieces of heirloom-quality furniture to be enjoyed for generations. We are proud to undertake this work.
Let ‘s go on a mental journey together… Imagine your yard as a literal island, waves lapping at the edges, detached and floating as its own independent ecosystem. The plants in your yard can’t call a lawn care service to get a fertilizer application, or an order of shredded bark mulch. Can this isolated group of plants possibly survive?
Pruning and removing trees naturally results in a lot of wood scrap. Since 2012, Heartwood has strived to save every usable piece of wood possible. Our efforts started with saving dead branches from oaks to burn in the wood stove, and we are now salvaging logs on most medium to large trees we remove. This winter we took the next step and bought logs salvaged from oak savanna restoration projects in the UW-Arboretum.
As its name implies, the swamp white oak is a lowland tree, often found in areas subject to periodic flooding, and on the edges of swamps and poorly drained meadows. Unlike white oaks (Q. alba) and burr oaks (Q. macrocarpa), which occur in large stands in the forests and oak savannahs of the Midwest, swamp white oaks are usually found growing singly amongst forests dominated by other species.
Carpinus caroliniana goes by many names: musclewood, American hornbeam, water beech, blue beech, and ironwood (not to be confused with a different ironwood that we also offer). When you’re strolling through Wisconsin woodlands and you come upon this tree, the name most likely to come to mind is “musclewood” because the smooth, ridged trunk resembles the musculature of a sinewy action movie hero.
i-Tree is a website designed to help property owners decide which tree species they want to plant and where they should plant them in their home or commercial property landscape. I-Tree was developed by some of the big players in U.S. tree care as an educational and practical tool, and is FREE to use. Combining data points and technology, this website can tell you actual benefits of planting a tree in a specific spot in your yard.
The defined practice of forest bathing is relatively young, but the intuitive act of healing in nature is nothing new. We evolved in forests, and forest bathing has been shown to decrease levels of stress hormones, improve the immune system and mood, and increase creative problem solving. I am certainly not the first to write about the benefits of spending time outdoors. In the words of John Muir, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home. Wilderness is a necessity.”
Have you ever wondered about the big trees in Madison, Wisconsin? Towering oaks with gnarled branches and thick trunks are scattered throughout the city. If you think these trees are unusual, you are correct. Some of them are hundreds of years old and have witnessed many generations and historical events. These old oaks are also significant because they are the last remnants of the oak savannas that used to cover southern Wisconsin.
