Articles
URBAN HORTICULTURE AND THE MANAGEMENT OF URBAN TREE HEALTH
All programs in Urban Tree Health benefit from correct plant selection – the right plant in the right place – and good plant husbandy, both horticultural considerations.
Increased toleration of some pests is helpful.
Managers of urban plants must realize that the perceptions of people may be more important than scientific facts.
Urban Horticulture is plants for cities; functional uses of plants to improve urban environments for the benefit of the people who live there.
Functional uses means screens against unpleasant views and against headlights.
It means essential food and special nutrition in human diet; fruit and vegetable production in cities in important.
It means effects upon noise and air pollution and on the amelioration of climates in urban areas.
It also means plants to improve the human psyche; plants and gardens are good for people.
Why should we talk about plants in cities? Because most of us live in cities, and as world populations expand, more and more people are gathered in tighter and tighter clusters.
It includes us all.
Until recently, little thought was given to the relationships of plants and people living in an urban environment.
Today, a whoh: new science has evolved in response to the growing recognition that plants are crucial to the health of cities along with the people who live and work in them.
This science is Urban Horticulture.
Now why should we talk about Urban Horticulture at a conference on Urban Tree Health? Because the two are closely related; some would say one is part of the other.
Further, the experiences from Urban Horticulture are directly applicable to Urban Plant Care and would seem to be of use to our understanding of how we should approach this interesting subject.
Urban horticulturists have begun to focus on the special problems, demands and uses of city plants, problems such as crowded roots.
We get most of our information about city plants from observations and anecdotes, from nurserymen, from landscape architects, and from people who manage properties in the city.
The civil engineer in the city knows more about root growth of these trees than does a research scientist because he has to repair the clogged sewer lines and broken pavement caused by urban trees.
There are problems of air pollution, restricted light and water among tall buildings, intensified wind currents, disturbed soil sites, harsh indoor environments, both in malls and in homes and offices.
The urban garden comes in all shapes and sizes from public parks to homeowner’s gardens, from street trees, with effects upon noise and air pollution and on the amelioration of climates, to office landscapes, and effects on work productivity and employee satisfaction to vegetable gardens which produce essential food and special nutrition in inner city human diets.
There are indoor mails highway plantings with screens against headlights and unpleasant views, even flowers in containers.