5 Reasons to Plant a Tree

Stop overthinking it, just dig the hole.

by

In my experience, I find that people tend to overthink everything involving trees. There is the understandable fear of trees falling during storms on top of homes. There is the obsession to plant trees in “the perfect” space, at the “ideal” time. Then, there are the decisions of which tree species to plant in a world of thousands of options. I find, more often than not, the average person consumed with these worries ends up not even planting the tree at all, or planting less trees than they could have. The human need to control certainly has its setbacks, especially within the framework of the natural world. 

My life, as of late, seems to be consumed by trees and the lack thereof. In addition to recently losing many trees in my woods to a storm, my team and I are currently engaged in a decade-long reforestation project in one of our local swamps. Our latest rendezvous there had us planting 12,000 nuttall oaks and swamp red maples in the grueling heat of July. Needless to say, I have been reflecting on the importance of trees, how they define the space in which we live, and how quickly they come and go. And I’ve come to a few conclusions. 

5 Reasons to Plant a Tree

Biodiversity

I will argue that nothing will benefit your garden and surrounding ecosystems more than planting native trees. Flowers and perennials are beautiful and add great benefit to our life and the critters in our garden, but trees bring it to the next level—hosting butterflies and other pollinators to a greater capacity than most herbaceous plants, and offering an abundance of food, refuge, and building materials to a wide array of insects, mammals, and reptiles. I see a lot of butterfly action in pollinator gardens within the city, but I find them tenfold  when I am in a space surrounded by trees. And more often than not, I am encountering less common butterflies that do not make it to the city centers. 

 Tree planting might even be seen as a "lazier” way to support our pollinators; if planted well, at a cooler time of year, a tree (or many!) can be a really hands-off  “pollinator garden”.  Often more drought-tolerant than herbaceous plants and without the need to cut back or weed, native trees can be less needy than a perennial garden.  Simply plant, help establish, and watch grow for the remainder of your life.

Shade

The reprieve offered beneath the branches of a tree is a wonder to me. We live in a world of continual urbanization; trees are coming down by the thousands every second, cement is getting poured everywhere, making conditions more hot and unbearable. Plant your yard with as many trees as possible and you will feel the difference. After losing so many of our trees in last spring’s  storm, we now yearn for central air conditioning that we never previously needed. Those trees offered more shade and coolness than we knew.

Drainage

Nothing takes in standing water like a tree. Plant a tree that craves the water left by a summer rainstorm,  and enter into a win-win symbiotic relationship. Avoid costly drainage projects, and embrace the natural powers of what trees have been doing for thousands of years. If you find yourself surrounded by cement, explore native trees and permeable surfaces as ways to combat drainage problems on your property. 

[Read this: Making the PawPaw Tree Cool Again]

Aesthetic/Design

As a landscape designer, I find that nothing shapes a human-altered landscape more than trees. Trees add height, they are your focal points, your welcome signs, your umbrellas. They ground a space and create structure. After studying residential yards for years, I realize I would rather see many trees in a yard with zero beds around a home than vice versa. Trees are the backbone of the landscape for me. Without them, the design feels incomplete. There are so many trees to choose from. You can choose a tree for a particularly elegant trunk form, for a lacey exfoliating bark, for fast height, for an evergreen nature, or many together for privacy. As far as I am concerned, you can find a tree or a grouping of trees to fulfill most aesthetic desires.

Something Larger Than Yourself

For those of you out there eager to do something for this world—this is as cliché as I will ever sound: plant a tree. It's an action you can undertake that can shape the landscape and world long after you are gone. A tree you plant today can house many creatures, clean our air, beautify our skyline, and cast shade for a long future of family dinners beneath it. 

I have many an arborist friend that will decry me for saying this, but I believe we should plant more trees and think less about it. What's the big deal if you plant a tree in the “wrong space” or at the “wrong time”? Move it next winter, or remove it entirely, and plant a new tree or two. So what if that tree might get topped off by city maintenance. Does it still benefit you and other creatures of this earth? And why does a tree have to look perfect/ideal to fit within our landscapes anyhow? Trees often don’t look perfect in the wild either; they are often growing “too close” to other trees (sometimes even growing within other trees!), competing with each other constantly, falling and resprouting from their base or somewhere else on their trunk. Trees do not follow rules. Besides, some of the coolest-looking trees I have seen have been mindlessly hacked at anyhow. There is a line of sycamores planted in Baton Rouge’s Garden District neighborhood under power lines. They get “topped” every couple of years by the city. They are some of my favorite looking sycamores. This is not an argument to top trees or ignore the factors that allow trees to thrive. This is just an argument that trees live on without our intervention or personal feelings. We are worried about tree conditions a lot more than the trees themselves. I would rather see ten trees planted on instinct than one tree planted and overthought. 

Now, as our summer comes to a close it is a great time to consider trees and make a planting plan for the winter—when trees fall dormant and are under less stress when planted.