This is NOT My Tree

This ugly tree. It’s not mine. Ok, well, technically I bought it and planted it on my property, so legally it’s mine. But after doing that, it became not mine.

Confused yet?

Ok, let me break it down for you. I live and garden in Texas. We get EXTREME heat and intense sun in the summer (high PPFD). These conditions can be tough on many plants. Some hybrid red maples, such as this Autumn Blaze maple, Acer x freemanii 'Jeffersred', don’t always take the heat and hot sun, even though there are a couple of species of red maple native to East Texas, Acer rubrum var. drummondii and Acer rubrum var. trilobum. Emphasis on East Texas…I live in North Texas where soils, climate, and weather are different.

Nonetheless, knowing what I know as a professional horticulturist, I sometimes push the boundaries and do or plant things that I would tell you not to, so I can experiment and see if I can make a plant work. The other reality is that I’m usually so busy helping everyone else with their horticultural needs that my own garden and plants get neglected. Both were the cases with this maple cultivar that I planted on an exposed west-facing corner. What did I know? That it may succumb to sun scald and subsequent infections, and sure enough that's exactly what happened. Sure, I treated the infections a few times, and did see some improvements…but again, I’m busy.

So in the 15-years since I planted it, the tree went from putting in a fair amount of growth, to doing a 180 into a slow descent into decline. It’s never looked great, usually full of scorched anemic leaves in the summer leaving a lackluster fall color display. Slowly, but surly, branches started to die, with the leader finally croaking this last summer, so I cut it off. Should I have removed this tree years ago and replaced it with a more appropriate species? Yes. Have I? No.

The tree is still here, and it’s still “ugly”.

Recently a neighbor asked me why it was still there, given it was clearly dying. My answer was “Because it’s not my tree.”

See, here’s the deal. The deal is Myrtle. Myrtle the mockingbird. This tree is HER tree. Mockingbirds can live about eight years or so. For the past five years Myrtle has had an established nest in this tree that she has tended continuously. The entire front corner of my property is HER turf, and she regularly hangs out with me while I garden and I love listening to her sing. So, you see, I can’t cut down the tree, even if I wanted to. It’s her tree, not mine.

Frankly, this is my overall philosophy to landscaping and gardening, and it’s the approach I take with all my plantings and upkeep. Once planted, the garden and the plants in it no longer fully belong to you - or to me. They become an integral part of the surrounding ecosystem and habitat. Birds, toads, insects, spiders, lizards…you name it, they all move in and take up residence as well as foraging. Keeping every plant and tree perfectly “tidy” with no dead branches or expired blooms, or keeping every leaf raked or blown out of your property, might serve your uptight human aesthetics, but it doesn’t serve your nature community. Dead trees, plants, or branches, are just as important to the habitat and sustaining core ecosystem functions, as your pretty foliage and flowers.

This tree, whilst dying, was not a hazard to anyone or anything - be it from dropping branches or threats to power lines - other than it perhaps may have been a bit aesthetically offensive to some. But I hate to break it to most of my neighbors…their constantly half-dead brown-tipped yet over-watered St. Augustine lawns and square holly hedges from 1960s are aesthetically offensive to me. So there ya go.

Now, I noticed just recently that Myrtle’s nest is gone and I hadn't seen her for a bit. I wondered if perhaps she'd moved on to the next bird life. It made me a little sad but then I thought AHA! I can finally take this tree down and replace it, which I really need to do along with some other much needed property updates. So I scheduled time with my arborist to remove it along with a bunch of other timely tree care. Just to have Myrtle show back up in the last few days, hanging out in HER tree on HER turf. (Or, honestly, it could be a male partner of hers as it's hard to tell the difference, maybe Myrtle has gone over to the rainbow bridge and this dude is looking for a new mate for his territory). Luckily, I haven’t seen any signs of a new nest yet, and I did have a pretty pointed conversation with her the other day that this was NOT the time to start building a new one, and that I was really sorry I was going to have to take her tree away from her. That I would be getting her a new one, albeit it’s not going to be as big and full of bugs for her to eat as this one.

Bad, bad human!

Anyhoo, just a friendly reminder that your garden doesn’t need to be perfectly “tidy” to be “correct”. Beauty and function come in all forms in the garden, and it’s often good to leave what is or has expired that is useful to your nature neighbors.