Chesterton Street Commissioner John Schnadenberg’s best estimate: between 80
and 100 trees on private property in town were lost during the tornado on
Aug. 19.
For urban forester and former Town Council member Gina Darnell, that
widespread pruning has presented homeowners with a marvelous
opportunity--once they’ve cleared their yards of the debris--to plant new
and better trees and to do so wisely, with the aesthetics and landscaping of
their yards specifically in mind.
The bad news first: homeowners will have to spend some money. Although
grants may be available to the Town of Chesterton next year to replace the
public street trees destroyed by the tornado, there simply are no grants to
underwrite the cost of private tree-planting, Darnell told the Chesterton
Tribune last week.
The good news: many homeowners now have the chance to work on a blank slate,
Darnell said. Were the old trees planted too close to the driveway, the
sidewalk, the house? Or did they, on the other hand, provide inadequate
shade? Perhaps that monster in the back grew to maturity beneath an
inconveniently strung NIPSCO line. Or the one in the front has played havoc
with the sanitary sewer lateral.
It’s imperative, in other words, to make a plan. Where do you want to plant
the new tree or trees? Is your purpose in planting strictly aesthetic or
utilitarian as well? What overhead obstacles or underground installations
could a tree grow into in time?
With a plan in mind, Darnell said, homeowners have another choice to make:
either to go with an already established tree--an eight-footer, say--or else
to plant seedlings. Obviously the former is the more expensive option but
it’s possible to shave some costs.
The price of an eight-foot tree is going to run around $325 including
delivery and planting, Darnell said. Or, if you’ve got a truck and a green
thumb, you could possibly find the same tree at a public wholesale nursery
for $250 to $275 but be prepared to haul it and plant it yourself.
Sometimes, Darnell added, arrangements can be made in the fall with a local
nursery to pre-order an eight-footer for delivery in the spring. “You could
get a real break,” she said. “You could even get a tree for around $120.”
Yet Darnell encourages folks with a bit of patience to consider seedlings,
which can grow much faster than one might expect. Five years ago, Darnell
said, she planted seedlings at her own home. Five years later they’ve
reached a height of 12 feet. “Those things are amazing if you have the
patience to wait and watch them grow.”
One piece of advice: be choosy about where you obtain your trees or
seedlings. The offerings of chain stores like Kmart or Wal-Mart “tend to be
poorer quality,” Darnell said.
Finally, there’s one last very important decision to make: the species of
tree. Avoid in particular trees advertised as fast growing. “Fast growing
means weak wood,” Darnell said. “It’s soft wood.” And especially don’t
replace silver maples, by far the most likely species to have been turned
into tinder by the tornado. Why? Because they’re weak-wood trees.
Best bet: some species of hard-wood tree like oak. “Pin oaks, red oaks, burr
oaks, some of them can grow three to four feet in a year,” Darnell said.
Meanwhile,
Street Trees
By Schnadenberg’s count, a total of 32 public street trees were affected to
a greater or lesser extent by the tornado: 17 turned to timber immediately
or in need of removal after the fact as hazard trees; 15 more in need of
trimming.
All things considered, Tree Committee President Jeff Cernick said, “it was
pretty light damage,” although he added the obvious: “Private trees were
devastated.”
“A lot of them were decayed down the middle,” Cernick noted. “There’s no
strength down the middle when it’s unhealthy. In the big wind that’s where
they snapped. It was kind of a way of pruning out the not so healthy trees.”
On the subject of private trees, Cernick did say the Tree Committee is an
advisory body with a brief set by the Town Council and is really not
authorized to advise residents on where, how, and what to plant on their own
property. “We can talk to people,” he said. “But we’ll refer to them to
others who have a better idea of what’s best for a private area.”
For the record, the four trees planted as part of the Arbor Day celebration
in 2008 and 2009 at the southeast corner of West Indiana Ave. and Eighth
Street, by Chesterton Middle School, survived the tornado, despite the fact
that they were very nearly in the twister’s direct path.