Quote:
Originally Posted by officedweller
Recently, I've noticed more middle aged trees dying. Like the ones along Richards in front of Mondrian, which might be 20+ years old.
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The building was completed in 2001, so they've been planted there for nearly 25 years. There's apparently no single reason for why street trees die. Some species are more hardy than others, and while landscape architects specify those they expect to survive, circumstances can change that.
The developer usually plants the initial tree planting, and the size of the soil slot for the root ball 20+ years ago would probably have been smaller than would be specified today. The recently planted trees in conjunction with the new Richards bike lanes had larger tree pits and the street is designed so that rain runoff is diverted into cells to improve the likelihood of the trees survival.
The past few years, as the climate has become warmer and less predictable have seen several years of drought, severe cold, and infestations of new insect threats to some species. Generally, no single event causes tree loss (other than storms blowing them down), but water shortage and heat stress over several years will weaken some trees, and those with more limited root systems may not survive.
It's also a balancing act for the City, as they don't want species with too vigorous root growth, as those can be the cause of the sidewalks being lifted and cracked over time.
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