ISA HK/China --- China Tree News (Restricting Mature Trees in Beijing and Repairing Cavities)

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Dear Station Members,

Attached are two recent sets of tree news from China media:

1. Restricting use of Mature Trees in Beijing

Beijing, the capital of China, has recently issued order to restrict the use of Mature Trees in view of the many past failures to waste money & time in the Forbidden City. Beijing has learned it the hard way & now would not approve in general principle to use any deciduous trees over 20cm DBH & evergreen tress taller than 6m. This would serve as a reference to our local designers in Southern China.

From memory of the Station Manager in his landscaping experience since 1984, the use of Mature Trees in landscaping appeared to kick off in HK with some designers favouring large trees for their so-called ' instant effect', without regard to whether topping or miniaturized rootball would be a consequence during transport. This practice appeared to spread into China with HK designers penetrating this market to expand business. Guangdong appeared to be the first to adopt Mature Trees in her cities during the rapid urban development in the 1990's. Many of these cities then demanded ' instant landscape' to green their many of Mature Trees new communities.

Nurseries in Guangdong saw this as a commercial opportunity & frantically dug out Mature Trees in natural reserves & countryside to exchange for quick dollars. Any eventual death would be deemed Act of God or poor species adaptation, never the ability of the Mature Trees to survive transplanting mal-practice.

Now with Beijing waking up to ban the use of Mature Trees in Govt landscape, a revolution in design concept has quietly begun in China. What the capital would do would affect the rest of China, & who would like to challenge the experts there with their own interest?

If any more of it is turning into the right direction for tree design & tree care in Mother China, it might be time for ISA HK/China to go into China eventually. It appears to be not for long too, with over 100 Chinese 'experts' from various cities to meet us at the Singapore Garden Festival 2008 Expo in July 24 - 26, 2008.

2. Repairing Cavity with Fillings & Artificial Bark

Here is another yet wonderful invention from 'experts' in China.

Some geniuses have experimented to put fillings composing of polyester, woodchip, wire mesh & non-woven geotextile into tree cavities. It was said that the fillings would occupy the void within, be plastic enough not to damage tree body during wind & were waterproof to fence off decay development.

The true magic came with the artificial bark to put on as cover on the fillings to ' repair' the tree to its original form. The material so used as bark would be Glass Fibre, with colouring to match the natural colour & marked grains to resemble the natural appearance. It was also said that cavities so repaired in this manner would appear to be so real that only trained eyes could tell the difference.

If this practice would work, these China ' experts' should be invited to publish a research paper in ISA to teach the world why others could not. Maybe the theory of CODIT would need to be re-examined & decay could be stopped by meticulously filling in. The world may be at lost when seeing what these 'experts' had claimed to do.

Can ISA HK/China really be able to communicate with 'experts' as such ??

best regards,

Sammy Au
Station Manager

The ISA Mission - Through research, technology, and education, promote the professional practice of arboriculture and foster a greater public awareness of the benefits of trees. (http://www.isa-arbor.com/)

ISA HK/China ---2008 research on 'The importance of trees and nature in community'

*** Our weekly Station Mail is for the information of Station Members only, but Station Mail has given up copyright & can be freely circulated. For administrative reasons, comments from outsiders are usually not entertained & may be circulated within our system locally & overseas. Please note Station Mail is sometimes given in Blog at http://isahkchina.blogspot.com , although images are usually not attached due to size. ***

Dear Station Members,

Attached is an article of a collection of recent research on the benefits & importance of trees for community development. Very rarely do we see so many research put together from international contribution to emphasize the social & psychological needs of humans on trees to improve the quality of living in a community. This article can establish to be a good reference point indeed.

In HK, it appears that when trees are preserved, it is out of respect for maturity & mostly out of sentiment, although sometimes for requirement of ecological balance & pollution control. When these mature trees are preserved by retention or transplanting, consideration on tree structure does not appear to be a critical factor. As long as the trees can be there, it would satisfy public demand. Then when the preserved tree would fail in a storm, it was just a matter of bad luck & nobody's fault.

On the other hand, when trees are selected for planting in our urban landscape, showy flowering appears to be a major consideration by many designers, which would appear to defeat the objectives of pollution control & ecological protection, since not too many flowering species so used at present would grow to the point of providing these benefits.

The Station Manager has been visiting tree planting in Singapore many times & would hesitate to say it with HK which would turn out to be a world of difference. On the other hand, if anyone would ask where the Station Manager would like to stand amidst the hottest days in summer in an urban area, the answer would be a definite 'yes' for Singapore & not HK, for all the big spreading trees they have over there. These trees would also give a feeling of home, besides one can feel peace & tranquillity under them.

Can HK create a similar effect in an overall scenario? Haven't we tried for years with sizeable funding & many committees already? Would anyone like to say that we are now near Singapore, or even comparable to Shenzhen?

There must be explanations for why we are at our current state & many of us appear to understand the problems. On the other hand, how many of us would actually try to propose solutions & are those solutions practical & feasible? Then if we want to stay on our current course without deviation, would we be able to satisfy the taxpayers & politicians in the longer run? Or do we tell the pubic that we should not compare our tree planting with anybody? This may be something we need to find out answers for those who are in the industry.

Maybe we can try to study why others have achieved success to compare with our own as a possible start. It would be from design, administration, execution, maintenance, regular inspection, risk management to preservation, & may be other areas. It may become a major overhaul for our existing system if we decide to look at it carefully. It appears that success does not come without a price tag.

Then how should we begin? Should ISA HK/China organize another Study Tour to Singapore by a joint Govt & Private Sector delegation for a 3rd time? There will be a Singapore Garden Festival 2008 Expo from July 24 - 26 over there. Should we form a big study group & go?

best regards,

Sammy Au
Station Manager

The ISA Mission - Through research, technology, and education, promote the professional practice of arboriculture and foster a greater public awareness of the benefits of trees. (http://www.isa-arbor.com/)