Photo credit: Mark Stehle
When President Bush proposed that a new aircraft—the cutting-edge V-22 Osprey— be used to transport him to and from the White House, a peculiar question was soon raised: What impact would the powerful V-22 have on the trees of the South Lawn?
For the answer, White House officials turned to the Morris Arboretum.
“The president was looking to change out the helicopter they use for take-offs and landings, so we went down and did a study on how the prop wash from the V-22 would affect the trees,” explains Jason Lubar, associate director of urban forestry at the Arboretum. “They knew about the trees and the old helicopter, but the V-22 was a much larger vehicle. So they called us. Basically anything to do with trees, or tree standards, that’s what we do.”
Lubar’s team at the Arboretum serves, essentially, as one of the region’s leading tree consultancy firms. He and his staff help builders preserve trees during construction projects, advise municipalities on how to improve tree cover, and help any number of clients pick out the right trees for the right spots on their property.
The job is a far cry from Lubar’s old career as a securities trader. But he says it’s a great deal more rewarding, too.
Q. What services does your program provide?
A. We provide a whole range of services to a wide range of clients—municipal governments, organizations, businesses, landscape architecture and architecture firms. We don’t really do consulting for individuals and we don’t really compete with the for-profit tree industry. But all of our services basically revolve around trees—tree inventories and assessments, what needs to be done to manage trees over a period of time, what that budget would have to look like. We also provide services to clients who are trying to preserve trees during construction. For example, down in Independence Square, behind Independence Mall, we were hired by the National Park Service. They were renovating that square and wanted to make sure the trees there were protected and would survive the construction process.
Q. Are there any companies or individuals that do what you do?
A. There are a few individuals, but they are few and far between. Since we work for the Morris Arboretum, there is a really nice benefit in that our consulting work helps support the mission of the arboretum, by providing fiscal support for other programs that don’t make money, like our education programs. It’s a known fact in the non-profit world that education takes a lot of money. It’s hard to make that self-sustaining. So we help sustain it within the Arboretum.
Q. What did you do before you worked here?
A. I’m a business administration person. I went to school for business. I understand the business thing well. But I’ve always had an abiding interest in the green world. I did sell securities for a while, but I like this end of the world better, working with trees and people and natural resources.
Q. Where does your interest in the natural world come from?
A. My initial exposure to the green world was that I grew up with two brothers, we were all close in age, and we lived right down by the Wissahickon. My mom would kick us out of the house and tell us to go play in the woods. When you’re in the woods a lot, you really develop a respect for it.
Q. You have offered your services to the Treevitalize program. What is that program and what do you do to support it?
A. A few years back people began to realize that, in our urban areas, tree cover was being lost at an alarming rate. Through the [state government], money was thrown at the issue and Treevitalize came out of that—an effort to find out how to put back the tree canopy in the urban areas of Southeast Pennsylvania. The program is a partnership of many different organizations… getting together to provide support for community groups that will actually plant and care for the trees. Our job was to pick out the highest-quality trees and get them delivered to where they needed to be planted, which may sound easier than it really is.
Q. Why is that?
A. We reject about 90 percent of the trees we look at, and that’s because of quality issues. This is one of the things we’ve just started to work on—addressing the quality of trees in the nursery trade. We are hoping Pennsylvania will adopt some nursery quality standards, and that trees will actually be graded. There are issues with the quality of roots—the way they’re planted in the nursery trade. The roots can be substandard. And then I think people have this idea of what a tree is supposed to be—a lollipop tree, totally round, symmetrical, with a little handle coming out. But the tree structure has to be for the long term. Nurseries should prune to get that long-term structure, but the pruning that we see too often makes trees have co-dominant stems. The tree may grow for a number of years just fine, but then one of the leaders breaks off. And unless you know what to look for, people buy those trees all the time.
Q. I imagine that you’re constantly seeing problems in trees everywhere you go.
A. Unfortunately, it really is like that. Me and other three guys I know, we’ll be driving around thinking, ‘Hey, look at that one.’ We’re always aware of tree structure, their species, everything about them.
Originally published Oct. 4, 2007.
