Biggest Bang for Our Buck: Plant Oak Trees
Spring enthusiasm for gardening is here – and sometimes it irks me.
With all the big-box home impairment stores already rolling out their racks of soon-to-be-killed plants, and all the Bradford pears, it just seems too early to me to get all twitterpated about gardening. All winter has been time to build soil health through composting. The garden is never not busy, so why get all excited now?
While in general I try to keep my garden-curmudgeonous to myself, spring brings it out of me. It seems most folks want an “instant” garden, which always makes the fastest growing (read: shortest lived) plants the most popular choice.
Let me offer an alternative to haste. All of the rest of life moves fast enough. Slow down!
Ask the wisdom of an oak tree. It will say “Be Patient.” Look at the Bradford pear tree. Main Street Brevard has a whole gallery – they grow fast, impatiently so, and then split at the slightest wind or snow.
The oak steadies on. An oak will not flower until it knows frost is past. It will not rush to the sun, but rather send a deep tap root.
The Bradford pear may not even get close to 50 years old. The Oak easily can reach 500. Be patient.
The best time to plant an oak is 100 years ago. The second best time is now! Not all of us will make it to get to sit under the shade, but several generations after us will. Plant a Bradford pear and not only will you get to sit under its shade in your lifetime, you’ll also be stuck with the thousand-dollar arborist bill. Be patient, invest. When thinking about making wildlife habitat at home, oak is the best choice of trees. The tree is known to hundreds of species of butterfly and moth cater pillars as a “generalist” in that it is a food source for all those beautiful flying insects.
Those bugs, in turn, feed all the warblers, chickadees, cuckoos and other birds that will nest in the tree’s branches. Mammals will find their homes in the trunks or their food from the acorns.
There is so much more to the microcosm of a single tree, like gold dust lichen on the bark, rhodobryum mosses climbing up the base, grey tree frogs singing in the rain, mushrooms sprouting from the leaf litter.
Every kingdom of life is represented on a single tree, and all those organisms are in relation with each other.
Not so with the Bradford pear tree. It does not even serve as a host plant for caterpillars – and just right there, early on, the chain of life is broken. Broken like its branches!
So plant an oak. Be patient and keep the cycle of life going. There’s no way to out-run nature, so move and grow and love at her speed.
Torry Nergart is an avid adventurer, a local to Brevard dad and spouse, and just happens to be conservation easement manager for Conserving Carolina – a calling that often puts him in a climbing harness, or waders, on a bike, a kayak too, to protect the land and water we all love.