You know when you find a clean $10 in your pocket after your jeans have been through the wash?  This is sorta like that.

An inventory project by the Georgia Urban Forestry Council has discovered that the original estimate of 3,200 city-owned and managed trees inside the Decatur city limits is likely too low.  Here’s the blurb from the GUFC’s newsletter…

When data collection was completed in downtown and the NW quadrant, it became clear that there were many more city trees than the 3,200 originally estimated. With only 40 percent of the area completed, we had inventoried nearly 60 percent of the budgeted number of trees! While this abundance of trees is a very good thing, we had to discuss with city staff options for how to complete the inventory since the total budget was for 3,200 trees maximum.

Some other interesting Decatur tree facts from the study…

• Of all 1,578 trees, 18 percent are flowering dogwoods, 15 percent are willow oaks, another 15 percent are crapemyrtles, and 9 percent are red maples; water oaks, flowering cherries, and Chinese elms account for an additional 4 percent each of the tree population in these two (2) sections
• 41 percent of the  trees are less than 6 inches DBH, and 76 percent are less than 12 inches DBH, verifying that there have been a lot of new trees planted in recent years, and that many of the trees are small maturing varieties; many of these new trees have been established through the efforts of Trees Atlanta, a strong advocate for increasing tree canopy cover in the Atlanta area
• The largest tree inventoried is a 49 inch DBH water oak located on West Ponce de Leon Avenue

Photo courtesy of GUFC newsletter

h/t: Patch

While ranking other people based solely on appearance is generally frowned upon in most circles these days, the ranking of trees – by age and size – is a perfectly acceptable way of celebrating of our leafy friends.

News has been slowly blowing around town over the past couple weeks that resident  Neil Norton got a White Oak over by the post office onto the Georgia Urban Forest Council’s Landmark and Historic Tree Register.  City Planner Amanda Thompson brought it to the City Commission’s attention during their last meeting and the DNO posted a nice follow up a few days later.

This got me thinkin': what and where are Decatur’s other trees of note?  Turns out there are quite a few all over the city.

First, there are three other Decatur trees on the Georgia Urban Forest Council’s list, all at Agnes Scott.

There’s “Professor Dieckmann’s Magnolias”, planted by the long-time ASC professor back around 1905 where while walking one day, “took them [magnolia seeds] up with his pocketknife,” and planted them in front of Rebekah Scott Hall.”

There’s the “Battle of Decatur” White Ash, that “dates back to 1854. “The Battle of Decatur, the eastern front of the fateful Battle of Atlanta, was fought on this very spot ten years later.”

And then there’s the “Mystery Incense Ash”, the oldest and most – well – mysterious of the three trees.

Read the rest of this entry »

The city’s Amanda Thompson forwards this note about a really interesting sounding Saturday class near Avondale on April 18th from 9a-10:30a.

The Georgia Urban Forest Council is sponsoring a program on restoring your backyard ecosystem at the Georgia Extension office near Avondale. A friend of mine is teaching it and it will be excellent and inspiring. More info below. It will cost $25 and includes a complimentary membership to GUFC. It will be Saturday, April 18th. Hope to see you there, register HERE.

Class Description

Learn how to transition your backyard to a natural landscape. A natural home landscape offers advantages over a traditional high maintenance yard in several ways: 1) Natural plantings of trees can reduce energy consumption in summer by better shading the home; 2) natural plantings require less time and energy to maintain; and 3) natural landscapes provide a virtual outdoor classroom. The challenge in moving from a high maintenance landscape to a more natural and sustainable one is to understand how your yard functions as its own ecosystem and then work with nature to restore the natural processes.

Eric King, ASLA has been designing gardens in Georgia for decades and has appeared on numerous TV/radio programs and in garden magazines throughout the country, and he will demystify the process of natural succession and offer a better path to creating a more natural home landscape.