[Lendal]

I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so.

We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the right ways.

[dylan604]

>I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist.

I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted correctly so they don't have a chance?

[Lendal]

I suspect the developer selected trees not for their suitability to the environment, but rather for their appearance in order to sell more houses. Perhaps if I knew more I could make them live but that didn't happen. So as they die and I replace them, I ask for trees that are native to the area so they can survive on their own. These new trees are still alive, but this situation has happened to most of the trees in the neighborhood, not just mine. Many people don't bother replacing trees at all so they just never get replaced. So my idea is that the government should encourage builders to plant trees that are native, and make sure the expertise is available to recommend better trees that builders could plant in an area that would survive and are better for the environment.

In Florida, builders understandably plant a lot of palm trees. But the palm trees they plant aren't native to Florida. Palm trees grow wild in Florida, but they don't plant these because maybe they're not pretty enough or they produce fruit which attracts wildlife, so instead we get palm trees from Australia or other places. It's really insane.

[kansface]

Developers mostly just plant fast growing trees.

[gopher_space]

Underwatering a recent transplant is pretty common. I'll just hold a hose on the area until I get bored.

[luhn]

Some great advice that I got: Buy a five gallon bucket, drill an 1/8" hole in the side. That way the water can soak into the ground without having to stand there with a hose for five minutes. Plus you can measure how much water you're giving the tree—I was told one bucket twice a week for the first year, but I'm sure YMMV depending on the tree and your climate.

[dylan604]

>until I get bored.

=) I really wish I could make a lot of my decisions based on this alone.

If you have a short attention span, that's not good.

Yet, at the same time, if you zone out for an hour and doing this daily, that's not good but in an opposite manner.

[crazygringo]

I'm no expert gardener but I can't help but wonder if it could be animals/pests eating the leaves before the tree is tall enough? Or gnawing all the bark, etc.

Also trees might not be a good match for the soil, there's clay the roots can't penetrate, etc.

[dylan604]

I get planting the wrong tree in the wrong area. That's part of what I meant by not being planted correctly. Not treating the root ball properly is another.

However, I have pecan/oak trees in my area. Every spring, I get free saplings from the nuts that actually germinated and sprouted in a lot of my pots that I use for my container garden. If I were to actually try to get one of these nuts to grow, it would never take. Yet every spring, Mother Nature gives me freebies that I feel guilty about plucking when it comes time to prep for the next round of veggies instead. I have an almost perfect spot to let another tree grow to full size. If it weren't for the remaining stump from where the shitty developer planted Bradford Pears, I'd transplant some of the Live Oaks saplings in their place.

[s1artibartfast]

Can you expand on your arborist conflict of interest. Are they all dishonest or can you simply ask what the expected lifetime of the tree would be?

[lupire]

It's just a a poster being dramatic. Arborists don't intentionally push to chop down tree that aren't overgrown relative to the space available to them.

The problem is that people like big trees and big houses, and they aren't compatible long term.

[pvaldes]

Yes, they kill trees. Slowly. Overpruning for money is, sadly, too common among professionals.

[rini17]

There's no substitute for self learning here, sadly. As soon as you want "nonstandard" garden you're on your own, with plenty of trial and error. With that in mind, maybe there's local gardening group?

[1123581321]

If you’re in the US, contact your local extension office for help. Though I’m also unsure why your trees would keep dying; I haven’t seen a lot of people with that issue.

[pvaldes]

Contract a remote freelancer arborist that does not have this incentives.

Or contract a remote landscaper and do the right things since the start

[googlryas]

Your local/nearby college/university almost certainly provides these services for free.