Why Plant Health Care, not Tree Health Care?

While trees are dominant ornamental features on your home or business landscape, they share this area with turfgrasses, shrubs, and other plants. All these plants are bedded in a common resource: the soil. The roots of trees, shrubs, turfgrass, and bedding plants intermingle and compete for water and nutrients. The roots of a single mature tree may extend well into your lawn or flower beds. Every treatment applied to the lawn (fertilizer and herbicide, for example) can impact the appearance and vitality of a tree. Conversely, treatments applied to a tree, such as pruning and fertilizing, can influence the appearance and vitality of the underlying turfgrass. The care of each plant in a landscape can affect the health of every plant in that landscape.

The objective of Plant Health Care (PHC) is to maintain or improve the landscape’s appearance, vitality, and – in the case of trees- safety, using the most cost effective and environmentally sensitive practices ad treatments available. Plant Health Care involves routine monitoring, preventative treatment, and strong working relationship between the arborist and the property owner or manager.

Arborists have the experience and training to detect many potential tree problems before they become life-threatening or hazardous. Arborists can also make tree recommendations, such as species selection and placement, to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Rmember, the potential size and longevity of trees warrants special attention in your landscape. Bedding plants can be replaced in a few short weeks and a lawn in a single growing season, but it can take a lifetime or more to replace a mature tree.