Mulch Ado About Nothing?
Most of what I have learned about mulching has come from the guidance of Leaf and Limb . In his book, Wasteland to Wonder , Basil Camus...
lyleestill9
3 days ago
top of page
Tree Museum
Latest Blog
.png)
When I was a kid Joni Mitchell had a hit with her song, Big Yellow Taxi:
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot
They took all the trees
Put them in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
A dollar and a half to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone
53 years later, we open a Tree Museum at the Plant in Pittsboro.
It could be the Tree Museum is nothing more than a short sidewalk
leading to an abandoned vegetable patch. It has a super cool sign that Kristen and Aaron made from a scrap propane tank—donated by Lee Iron and Metal down in Sanford.
Inside the fence there are a dozen native trees that came from Rachel’s Native Plants up the hill. Plus a fringe tree from Trees for the Triangle that went in on Opening Day.
I think the Tree Museum will be more than that.
One day it will be a sought-after event space. I’m thinking it is going to spill over the fence and start liberating and labeling some specimen trees that have survived the deer pressure over the years.
Trees @ The Plant
Pecans
Visitors to the Plant are greeted by a series of trees planted along the asphalt parking places. There are a pair of juvenile pecan trees on either side. Pecans are slow growing trees that are members of the hickory family. They are native to North Carolina, and their nuts are prized world wide.
Someday (when we are dead and gone), these trees will provide awesome shade, and a tremendous drop of nuts.
The idea of planting "edible landscaping" came to us from Matthew Arnsberger at a charette we held in in 2005. He's the landscape architect/designer/native plant expert in Carrboro that runs Piedmont Environmental Landscaping and Design. We took his guidance, and 15 years in, we are loaded with fresh, delicious calories in our landscape.
Chinese Chestnut
We've been trying to grow chestnuts for 27 years in Chatham County, and our efforts are just beginning to bear fruit. Chestnuts used to be a staple in the American diet, but the trees were wiped out by a blight.
If you go to a meeting of the American Chestnut Foundation, you can learn all about the genetics and the herculean effort now underway to restore this important native species. Those are not these trees.
These trees have been crossed with genetic material that makes them blight resistant. They are essentially GMO'd trees.
With one tree by the guardhouse and another on the other side of the street, there is a time in late spring when entering the plant means walking through a cloud of chestnut sex. The air is musty, with a unique smell.
Collecting the chestnut drop is a daily endeavor--in a race against squirrels, crows, deer, and raccoons. And the caloric drop is huge. Chestnuts are a great way to restore nutrition to a landscape.
The nuts have fallen out of fashion since their departure from the food scene. Some remember the smell of roasting chestnuts on the streets of New York City, and many more can bust out a few chords of a Nat King Cole song, but the number of visitors who have sunk their teeth into a freshly roasted chestnut are rare.
When the nuts are harvested in the fall, we eat a lot of chestnuts. So do our friends and neighbors. We think chestnuts will make a comeback--we are just not sure how...
Demonstration Orchard
I bought these apple trees for the Fair Game Beverage Company on the occasion of their foray into apple brandy and wine.
Chris fetched them, got an orchard in, and pruned them some.
It became a "demonstration orchard" under the care of Jim Crawford at Chatham Ciderworks, and it now has some pear trees in the mix.
Growing apples has always been a heartbreak for me in Chatham County. I feel like it is "over" for apples in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Too hot.
Even in the mountains growers are moving to the north slope.
There is a healthy apple industry in North Carolina, and the Fair Game Beverages buys tons of NC apples.
Red Cedar
Opposite the orchard, on the other side of the vegetable garden, is a lovely stand of native red cedars.
Cedar is a terrific resource that prospers in the woods of Chatham County. It's resistance to bugs and rot and its intoxicating smell has long made it a favorite for all sorts of uses--from furniture to garden fence poles.
A lot of the outdoor furniture at the Plant is made of cedar.
Cedars put out an "apple rust," a fungal disease that is not good for apple trees. Which means planting an orchard in the shade of a stand of cedars is not the ultimate in systems thinking. Oh well. The cedars stay.
Arlo and Julia brought The Cedars to life one semester. They went after the honeysuckle, poison ivy, metal trash, and farming trash of years gone by.
Interestingly, they did not have to battle back privet. Established cedars seem to resist its onset with shade and the dropping of acidic needles. Young cedar trees, however, do not grow fast enough and succumb to the rise of privet. In the war between cedars and privet at the plant, cedars are losing.
Black Walnut
On the northwest corner of Pandemic Park--south of the Cedars, is a Big Mama Black Walnut. Her progeny are scattered everywhere--you can see adolescent walnut trees throughout the park, but she is clearly the one who started it all.
Black Walnuts poison the soil with their roots in order to keep competition down. Successive farmers at the Plant have asked for this tree to be removed, but we have held our ground. As far as the Tree Museum goes, this walnut is a "Specimen Tree."
Beneath the walnut was a stand of Coral Berry, a native woodland shrub that is sought after by insects and birds for food, and by wildlife for cover. Coral Berry appears to have adapted to successfully grow in the shade of a walnut tree, in its poisoned soil.
One of our former landscape managers drove the zero turn mower over our prize coral berry patch. Instead of recovering, it went extinct.
Adolescent Black Walnut
Black Jack Oak
I'm not sure exactly what kind of oak this is. It was growing in a fence line, and was spared by the excavator for some reason. When all the fences were gone, and the red clay scar on the earth was healed (so we could build a farm), this tree was still standing.
It took us a year to rip the parasitical vines out of it (poison ivy, honeysuckle, wild grape), but it now stands majestically alone, on the hill, overlooking Pandemic Park.
I must have asked a half dozen people what kind of tree it is, and I got a half dozen answers. My favorite came from Bruce Paden, the arborist from Carrboro. He said it was a "Water Oak, or a Black Jack Oak."
When I scan the leaves with my Picture This App, it tells me it is a Black Oak, a Water Oak, or a Possum Oak.
I'm going with Bruce on this one. Let's call it a Black Jack Oak.
Persimmon
We have a handful of Asian Persimmon trees at the Plant. This one is on the hill below the Black Jack Oak--across the clearing from the Black Walnut.
There are native persimmon trees in the woods of Chatham County, but the fruit is small and the pits are large--making it harder to enjoy fresh persimmon goodness.
The fruit from Asian Persimmons is much larger--about the size of a large tomato. It is astringent until the late fall--becoming sweet and delicious around Thanksgiving.
Folk wisdom says that you are not to harvest persimmons until after the first frost--but that is not entirely accurate.
The trick to a delicious persimmon is to let it over ripen to the point of decomposition. When you take them right to the edge of decay, they become a late fall treat that is to die for.
Honey Locust
We discovered this Honey Locust when we were building Pandemic Park.
We were blown away by the massive thorns protruding from its trunk--at about eye level.
Wikipedia tells us that the Honey Locust is an ancient tree that was a favorite of the mastodons and giant sloths. Apparently the giant sloths would lean against the trees while enjoying their sweet seed pods, and the tree would fall over. Evidently these thorns were the tree's evolutionary response.
There is another theory about the Honey Locust. Some folks say the thorns are there to afford protection to Fairies. The tree protects Fairies, the Fairies protect the tree.
Tami prefers this idea. I'm ambivalent. Whether it is giant sloths, Fairies, or mastadons, I think its thorns are remarkable.
Sadly, our giant honey locust died in 2023--and stands dead in the park to this day. Many of its progeny live on.
Black Locust
We had a black locust in the backyard of my childhood home in Woodstock, Ontario. I remember climbing it, and I remember its thorns. Nothing like the Honey Locust thorns, but still menacing.
We are slightly out of its native range, but it has been widely planted and has "naturalized" throughout North America. It is considered an invasive in the Midwest and western United States.
The Black Locust is a sun loving "pioneer" species that likes to kick off the succession of a new forest. I'm not sure this one looks real happy. As we expand Pandemic Park we will improve its solar path--although I doubt we will get it back to full sun.
We will also remove the parasitical vines: poison ivy, honeysuckle, wild grape, which may help it regain strength.
Black Cherry
Most of the trees in Pandemic Park are Black Cherry and Black Walnut. What is fascinating about the Black Cherry, which is generally considered a "weed species," is that its bark completely changes with age. On the lower left is a specimen on the hill beside the Gazebo. It's a young tree, that bears fruit. In the middle is a older Black Cherry with a distinctive bark, next to a mature tree where the bark looks entirely different.
Also known as a "Rum Cherry," its fruit is enjoyed by birds, but the pits and wood contain cyanide that are known to make livestock sick.
Hackberry
Hackberry is native to North America and commonly confused with the Sugarberry tree. The distinctive "warts" on its bark give it away.
I have a stand of Hackberry trees at my shop in Moncure, and it routinely attracts a flock of yellow bellied sap suckers as they pass through on migration. I haven't seen any at the Plant, yet, but I'm guessing our Hackberry trees will bring them on.
Tulip Poplar
We planted a lot of Tulip Poplars at the Plant with help from a grant from Burt's Bees. Burt's puts a lot of money into building pollinator habitat.
Tulip Poplars are native to North Carolina, and they bloom at peak honey flow--that is, they are flowering just as our bees are making honey. Most of the honey produced in North Carolina comes from the blossoms of Tulip Poplars.
The decline of the honeybee is attributed to the introduction of neonicotinoids--an insecticide made by Bayer Crop Science.
One time Bayer Crop Science sent a donation to Abundance, the non-profit at the Plant that was developing honeybee habitat with the help of Burt's Bees. Abundance turned the Bayer donation away.
Sadly, it takes me back to that Joni Mitchell song:
Hey farmer, farmer, put away that DDT now..."
Red Maple
This pair of Red Maples were here when we bought the Plant in 2005.
They are on the southern side of Fair Game--up the hill from Pandemic Park--in the "side yard."
As the Plant transitioned from an "Eco-Industrial Park" to the Beverage District that it is today, it quickly became obvious that "shade" was the most valuable thing we owned.
Everybody sought out seating under the Red Maples.
We put a picnic table there. Then a table and chairs from Jacques and Wendy at French Connection. Benches started accumulating there. Customers modified the landscape to be in the shade of the Red Maples.
Got it. We've been developing shade strategies ever since. Thank you, Red Maples...
Figs
We have fig trees planted at Little Pond Gardens.
Some years in late summer, we are awash with figs.
Vegan alert: as part of their life cycle, the fruit of the fig ingests a pollinating wasp. If you are committed to "no eating animals ever," I'm guessing figs need to be "out."
Sometimes figs winter kill on us, but those with established root systems battle back year after year.
Figs are not native to North Carolina. They come from the Mediterranean. They do well here most of the time. They are well behaved (not invasive), and eating
them fresh off the tree is kinda like eating a food of the Gods...
Asian Pear
These Asian Pears ripen on the tree like an apple--unlike the heirloom pear on the other side of the street.
When the pears are on, most of the fruit from this tree is eaten fresh by humans and crows. Some of it goes to Chatham Cider Works to be pressed into juice and used in their Backyard Blend.
Asian pears are grafted onto a root stock and are not native. They are solidly bug resistant, require no chemical upkeep, and produce solid flawless fruit.
Hey farmer farmer
Put away that D.D.T now
Leave me spots on my apples
And the birds and the bees
Please!
Bradford Pear
The Bradford Pear is a "Franken Tree" that needs to be eradicated. It is a cultivar that was brought from China and developed by the USDA in Maryland at the turn of the 20th Century.
It forms the perfect tree shape every time--the image a child would draw if asked to create a picture of a tree.
Beautiful spring flower show--except its flowers smells like fish.
Beautiful fall color show.
Little gnarly berries that birds tend to avoid. I have seen robins dining on Bradford Pear fruit--but they clearly prefer Cedar berries if available.
And invasive. The tree creators in the academy got that part wrong. What was once thought to be sterile is spreading rapidly. We control its spread by mowing its offspring--and we should do our part by cutting it down--but we need the shade.
If you look closely you will see an Asian Pear engulfed in this Bradford Pear--which gives us a funny handful of fruit each year.
Buckeye
We have a pair of buckeye trees out front by the big copper frogs. They were planted by Debbie Roos, our Ag. Extension specialist who focuses on native plants and pollinator gardens. She's the one who designed, built, and maintains the marvelous gardens in front of Chatham Marketplace.
She received a grant from Rural Advancement Foundation International and did a big planting at the Plant.
Not really sure what the deal is with buckeye trees. Apparently the fruit is toxic to humans, loved by deer and wild turkeys. It's hard pods are sometimes used by jewelers, I've been told.
Basswood
My "Picture This" app tells me this is an "American Basswood." It is an utterly unremarkable tree, except it made its stand in a chain-link fence that once bordered the front of the Plant.
After all of the cutting, dragging, and clearing this lone tree was still standing. We elected to leave it, simply because it had survived. Now it shades the Dino Diesel Dispenser which is part of the Art Walk.
I think of basswood as a source of furniture. I once had a basswood box back when I collected antique furniture--but like the tree it was rather unremarkable.
Winged Elm
This poor, sad Winged Elm on Bay St. is a survivor. Planted in a berm, probably by a bird, it has survived multiple earth moving events.
Cars park against it. Traffic scrapes it.
Yet it persists. Young, tough, rather uninteresting. Here's hoping that it one day spreads a lovely canopy of shade over Bay Street.
Trees for Shade
Our friend Tony Kleese used to come by the Plant a lot. He suggested that we plant some trees along the parking lot to provide shade for cars.
We thought that was a brilliant idea. We lined the drive with red maples, silver maples, and tulip poplar.
Problem #1: The parking lot is lined on both sides by faster growing pine trees that choke out growth.
Problem #2: The parking lot is south facing. Planting trees on the eastern side does afford some protection from the morning sun, and planting trees on the western side doesn't really do anything because the trees are lower than Starrlight Mead.
So we have trees along our parking lot--without the desired shade effect. Oh well...
STAY UP TO DATE
bottom of page