An Artickle from American Gardener
STORY BY
CHRIS
RODDICK
Let the Trees Grow Old
Why letting trees die in place might be the most life-affirming
thing a gardener can do.
BACK IN THE MID-1990s, after starting my tenure as an
arborist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I was shown an
old, somewhat falling-apart crabapple trec (Malus flori-
bunda). The curator of that collection thought it might be
time to remove it. As I walked around the tree, I noticed
some fascinating things: the trunk was hollowed in places
and sprouting brick-red, woody textured fungi-likely
a reishi, a wood-rotting mushroom I recognized and
thought, that’s cool. One large lower branch had grown so
far out, away from the trunk, that it touched the ground
and was rooting itself into the soil. And just overhead a
great blue heron perched on a dead limb overlooking the
garden’s lily pools and their hundreds of goldfish. It was
a scene from a David Attenborough documentary right
in the middle of Brooklyn.
My arboriculture training at the time told me that this old
tree with all its problems, dead limbs, hollows, and overex-
tended branches, was what we then termed a “hazard tree.”
It had lost its form, dying back, and no longer looked like
the perfect specimen one would expect to see at a botanic
garden. By the book, the curator was right; it should go on
the removal list. But my gut said different.
That day, I started to question if old trees were always a
hazard, or if they were just becoming something different.
Trees are unique in nature, in that they have living and
nonliving parts that both function to help support the tree
structurally and biologically. Ask a tree biologist if wood
is dead or alive, and the answer is yes. As trees grow, the
amount of non-living wood increases exponentially, and
that dead wood eventually becomes a highly valuable
source of food and habitat for so many organisms. The tree
itself is an ecosystem that changes over time, but the latter
part of that process of decline hardly ever gets played out
in our landscapes. Once trees stop meeting our aesthetic
expectations, they’re far too often removed, even when they
don’t pose a safety issue.
With a little research, I found that the crabapple was
one of the original trees planted at the Brooklyn Botanic
Garden in 1911. I convinced the curator to just see what
happens, assuring him that we’d remove anything that
might be unsafe. In the meantime, we’d have a front row
seat to this fascinating process of decay and renewal. Over
30 years later, the tree is still there. The soil around it is
rich in organic matter from the decaying wood, and the
branch that rooted into the ground became a new gener-
ation of that same tree. The old gnarly trunk and decayed
wood became sculpture-like over the years and have been
photographed, painted, and sketched thousands of times
by visitors. It’s become a living work of art and is known as
the “The Walking Crabapple.”
A tree’s life doesn’t have to end in its waning years. Old trees
may have spent more than half of their lifespans in decline.
As they gracefully die back, they cultivate new ecological
life. Animals and birds will make homes in decayed wood,
as well as forage for insects within. As stems and roots break
down, they make fertile soil that other plants and trees can
use to start life anew. We may even join in the feast: choice
mushrooms like oysters and maitakes grow on dead and
dying trees.
Where it’s safe, letting trees decline in place can provide
vital habitat for wildlife, nutrients for the soil, and if you’re
lucky, a one-of-a-kind sculpture in your own garden.
Perhaps dead wood isn’t just dead anymore; it’s the new
garden art.