In this enlightening episode, we delve into the world of urban forestry with Athena Bashir, an esteemed arborist from Seeds of Wisdom. Athena shares her wealth of knowledge about the critical importance of tree canopies in urban environments, the challenges of maintaining a diverse tree population, and the significant difference between certified arborists and general tree care providers. Tune in to learn why trees are essential for livable cities and how strategic tree planting can influence urban landscapes positively.
Estevan Gonzales :
KSWV, Suave Radio. It’s now time for Save Water Santa Fe with your host, Mr. Bob Wood.
Bob Wood :
And I’m not so much the host today as just a companion on the radio. The companion. We’ve got somebody that helps the city out quite a bit a lot of times. We work together a bit working with the Municipal Tree Board have for years. And just in general, getting the word out about what an arborist is, what they do, what kind of work they do, and maybe the difference between a professional arborist and a practicing arborist, I guess you could say. I don’t want to say anything less than that. So I’d like to welcome to the show Athena Bashir. She has a little company called Seeds of Wisdom. With that little company comes a lot of knowledge and a lot of work that’s been done and a lot of progress that’s been made with a focus on the future. When you work with trees, that’s kind of what you have to focus on. I’m sure everybody knows the old adage of the best time to plant a tree, which is a normal question people ask you. And, of course, my response always is the classic, 20 years ago, and the second best time is today. So good morning, Athena. How are we doing today? Good.
Athena Beshur :
Great. Thanks, Bob. Thanks for having me here.
Bob Wood :
Oh, Morton, happy to have you. It’s great to talk about trees. And, well, also the organization working with the city through the Municipal Tree Board. And they actually do so much work in the background, working and getting the word out. But I guess the main thing I want to know is why is the tree canopy important to an arborist?
Athena Beshur :
Well, we need to protect our canopy because it makes the life livable in the shade. As you know, being under a tree offers a respite from the heat. It offers protection for wildlife, especially birds and other small mammals here in our city. And it also hones in a sense of place. So we remember those trees that we sat under during special moments in our lives. And it really brings home that sense that we’re in some place very special. It turns just random space into placemaking.
Bob Wood :
And so many times when I’m driving around, whether it be in Santa Fe or Albuquerque, I like to go by and visit the trees I planted 20, 30 years ago and see what progress they’ve made and how well they were planned out kind of thing. So it’s kind of fun. It’s almost like seeing one of your children grow up without having to pay the college tuition. So that’s even better. Yeah. But there is quite a difference between a responsible, certified arborist and just somebody on the street that has a chainsaw.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right. Just having a chainsaw doesn’t make you an arborist. And we’ve seen firsthand some of the topping where trees get completely topped of their upper canopies without regard to where those cuts are happening by untrained arbor people with chainsaws. I hate to use even the word arborist for those folks. I really hope that more people can invest in finding out how to prune properly so that we can have structurally sound trees that grow a long time. What happens is when those trees get topped, A bunch of suckers come out, water sprouts come out of those ends, and there’s no real strong structure. So they become very vulnerable to our strong spring winds and can actually cause a lot of damage, not only for the tree, but also for the surrounding infrastructure.
Bob Wood :
And that becomes… Another thing that becomes important is… When you hire somebody to do some work, you like to find a way to make sure that at least that they’ve done this job before kind of thing. And as Stefan can tell you, I’ve always pressed on the fact that anytime you hire a contractor, check and make sure, one, make sure they have insurance and a license that at least tells you that they’re in this job or in this business. Right. for the long term and we’ll be there. Many times when you take on tree pruning or maintenance and care, even as a contractor, you come back to the same tree year after year after year. And so it is, again, kind of like working with your children kind of thing. But having a successful tree 20, 30, 40, 50 years later always becomes important because the shade that you planted as a little sapling is now shading an entire half a block on the street kind of thing.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right.
Bob Wood :
And it really feels good. It does. But that and just the overall work that a tree does to add a bit of humidity in the air sometimes in the summer, it offers you shade and in general cools off all that black asphalt that’s out there, which has become really important. And even here in Santa Fe, we have a lot of aging trees. Right.
Athena Beshur :
We do. We do. Although in the park system, many of our trees that almost 40% are under six inches in diameter, which is an indicator that those aging trees aren’t surviving. And that’s where good water comes in and proper techniques of not only pruning, but also bringing water over to them through stormwater.
Bob Wood :
And another fact about the aging trees, kind of like myself, I’m not calling myself an aging tree, but they end up with a few medical problems kind of thing. They end up with defects that start to accentuate themselves. And by that time, they’re 30, 40 feet tall. And if you can imagine just a small branch of maybe three inches tall. falling on top of your Mercedes Benz. You can see what a responsibility it is with the city to maintain the trees, maintain the canopy cover. But also the real importance of being an arborist is advising people what to do over the next 50 years. Tell us a little bit about that.
Athena Beshur :
Okay. Well, right now, for example, we’ve inventoried all the planted trees.
Bob Wood :
Inventoried? Why do you inventory a tree? We don’t sell them.
Athena Beshur :
We inventory the trees to find out what they are, where they are, and what condition they’re in and what size they are. That helps us determine later on how fast they’re growing, whether they’re growing at a decent rate, meaning that they’re getting what they need to grow. It also helps the maintenance department at the parks division know which type of trees Arborists to send out whether they need bucket trucks or whether they just need a 20-foot pole to do some pruning work.
Bob Wood :
And believe it or not, Santa Fe has quite a history with their trees. Back Civil War, 1800s, late 1800s, the only fuel people had here were trees to burn for warmth in the winter. So the amazing fact about that was there were no trees in Santa Fe, especially along the river, that sort of thing. I mean, it got to be a business of sorts where you would go out with animals to find trees, to cut them up, to bring them in for firewood. And we even had a special place to park those animals when they came back in called Burrow Alley. And so trees are a part of Santa Fe. I mean, the political, the whole political outlook in the Siberian Elms and everything has quite a history. So we don’t have time to go into all that here. But what we’d like to concentrate is on the future of the trees here. We need to, one, give back, but the other is to direct people in the right aspect of where to go. So let me ask you, besides my adage before about planting a tree, when for you is the best time to plant a tree, actually?
Athena Beshur :
Actually, right now. It’s the fall, so it’s a great time to put in any… any evergreens and get them in the ground they do continue to soak up water throughout the winter so it’s better to get those in right away and then throughout the winter until the ground freezes is a great time to plant deciduous trees because they aren’t needing as much water they settle in over the winter and so then they’re already established by the time springtime comes
Bob Wood :
And it’s still kind of amazing to me that overall when a city is planting trees in such a way, medians and long sidewalks and things like that, which is a pretty harsh environment, the average retention on a tree is about 6% of everything that gets planted. And that hurts my heart at times.
Athena Beshur :
I know. Because it takes a long time to grow that tree, to get it in the ground. But the nurseries have been growing that tree sometimes for five years before it even gets there. So by just planting trees and not caring for them or not giving them what they need to get established, we’re just basically not only throwing money out the window, but we’re also making it harder and harder for those nurseries to keep up with that demand when they’re not We’re not continuing to grow that tree later.
Bob Wood :
I don’t understand because it’s so simple to plant a tree. You just dig a really hole just big enough to hold the… Excuse me, hold the root ball and as deep as possible, right? You just put it in there and let it go, right?
Athena Beshur :
Actually, let’s back up a little bit. First of all, we want to dig a hole that’s wider than the root ball, quite a bit wider, because… We want those roots to have a little bit of room to get established. And then we don’t want to dig it deeper than the root ball. What we do is we measure the root ball and actually sometimes we double check to make sure that where the root ball is is actually where the roots are. Because if we plant a tree deep… It’s going to die. And there’s another adage that says, plant a tree high, let it die. Plant a tree low, let it die slow.
Bob Wood :
That’s so true. So you’re telling me that a tree grows different than grass. It doesn’t grow from the bottom and just keep pushing up?
Athena Beshur :
No, it grows from the top and keeps on growing up from there. And that’s where the good structure comes in. Because if we have a structurally sound tree, it has a strong leader. And those leaders focus in on growing very strong trunks. then they continue to grow up and reach up where their branches become scaffolds. And so if you can imagine a scaffold from one position to the next, growing around, that allows those branches to really have their space to grow from those tips and grow outward.
Bob Wood :
But it’s so easy. But I go to a lot of nurseries, and this is another reason to hire a professional arborist, even to pick out some of your trees. is because a lot of times nurseries will prune the tree incorrectly. They make it look nice and bushy or something like that. It all depends upon what they’re after. So if you have a professional go out and look, you can buy a tree with fewer defects that will show up in the long run. That’s right. So tell us about some of the other defects you can find in the canopy of trees as you’re trying to purchase it.
Athena Beshur :
One thing that I look for is any V unions. So where the union is too close together from branch to trunk or… Or two branches. Because what happens is when that union’s really close together, the bark begins to include itself. And that is a very easy place for it to split in a windstorm.
Bob Wood :
And I know many of the things about the crossing branches you try and avoid. So… Are you saying even on a brand new tree we may have to do some pruning?
Athena Beshur :
Absolutely. Sometimes people put them in the ground and prune them right then and there. We do that if we plant a tree in a park system because it might be five to seven years before that tree gets pruned again. So we want to make sure that it has a really solid leader so the leader is a foot above the rest of the branches so that it can continue to be the leader. And that there aren’t any crossing branches that’ll end up scratching on themselves.
Bob Wood :
Well, it sounds like we’ve got a really good handle on planting of the trees and taking care of them. Which means we must have a lot of trees in Santa Fe, right?
Athena Beshur :
We do. We have a lot of trees in Santa Fe, which is great. But we still want more. We have about a 20% canopy cover. And after a lot of research, now urban foresters and arborists are saying that really 30% canopy cover is an ideal coverage for good livability. Where we really want some more trees is farther on the south side that was originally grasslands. But now with trees there, we have some gray infrastructure, buildings, and with those comes opportunities to plant trees.
Bob Wood :
But also in the long run, my experience working with Save Water Santa Fe, they also help with retaining a lot of the surface water, the rain that comes down. And in that aspect, stormwater becomes a concern.
Athena Beshur :
So how do trees help us with stormwater? They actually absorb the water in the ground and then very slowly percolate it out through something called transpiration. And transpiration then brings more humidity in the air and makes it a lot more comfortable for us.
Bob Wood :
Not as comfortable as Florida sometimes, but… But, no, it’s always great to go to a city that has trees that line the side of the streets and it’s so much cooler and it’s so much easier to find a place to park your car. And that’s another thing I want to bring up, parking lots that are big open spaces of nice hot black asphalt. Yeah. If you notice, people park their cars even early in the morning because they’ve been there before. Park it where the shade is going to be in the afternoon. So everybody should realize that the more shade you have, the cooler your car will be, which would make the entire area around the tree a little bit cooler. And I just think it’s a great idea to work with those trees, to get them to grow, to keep them continued. But what happens with the roots when they’re planted in a little five-foot square that’s only a couple of feet deep?
Athena Beshur :
Five feet isn’t enough to have a tree grow because those roots need uncompacted soil in order for them to grow out fully. Really, the ideal is 25 by 25 inches. And if we can start creating designs in parking lots and everywhere else where we allow those trees 25 feet around, then they’re going to grow a lot better, a lot faster. They’re going to absorb a lot more stormwater because uncompacted soil also holds more moisture. Yeah.
Bob Wood :
So what you’re saying is, as an arborist, you can help the tree and yourself plan ahead of time. If it’s planted in the right tree and in the right place, it can help benefit both the parking lot, the environment, and all of the space around it.
Athena Beshur :
And the asphalt. Asphalt lasts longer when it’s not being bombarded by so many UV rays from the sun. Right.
Bob Wood :
Sounds great to me. Sounds like a way to save money and save water over the long run. Yes. So, I think what we need to come up with is a national day to plant trees. You mean Arbor Day? Oh, there’s already one.
Athena Beshur :
It’s the last Friday of April.
Bob Wood :
Which has always seemed unusual to me. I know I dislike planting in the midsummer or when it’s getting close to. But that’s more of a day to celebrate trees, not so much plant trees. So… A lot of cities, a lot of organizations have moved that date around, whether it be in late September or even into October, November.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right. I think ours in New Mexico is about a month earlier. It’s usually in March. Yeah. But then we celebrate it really on the National Arbor Day. I guess that means you can celebrate trees anytime you want. You can. Yeah. And actually, if people go out to the park system, they can see what tree they’re under now. Because through that inventory, if they go to Tree Smart Santa Fe in the resource page, they can sit under one of those dots. It’s geolocated. And they can find what tree they’re under in any park in Santa Fe. Is there a way… Excuse me.
Estevan Gonzales :
How about we take a quick break and listen to a quick word from our sponsor? And we’ll give Bob an opportunity to have some water there. And we’ll be back with more right here on KSWV Radio, 99.9 FM and 810 AM. All right, we’re back. And Bob got a text from a listener asking if there’s a better time of the year to do the pruning. And they’re concerned that if they prune the wrong way that they might kill the trees. So a couple of questions there. Let me let Athena jump in on that one.
Athena Beshur :
Okay, great. So one good time to prune deciduous trees is late summer, so August, September. Now, we’ve already passed that time. We’re getting towards the end. Part of that reason is that the sap is starting to slow down as we move into winter for deciduous trees. Those are ones where the leaves fall off in winter. Mm-hmm. And then we can come back between January and March is another great time to prune those trees because the sap is beginning to flow again. So the reason for the sap is that they end up healing the wounds very quickly. Pinons, we wait until… until the end of September to start pruning them, especially because we don’t want to prune them while the bark beetle is flying. So we stop pruning those. We used to say March. Now we’re kind of pushing that sometimes in warm springs to February. So we have all winter from the end of September into March to prune those trees. But look at your weather. If it’s starting to warm up, We want to make sure those wounds are healed before the insects start flying in about May.
Bob Wood :
And I think that’s one part a lot of people don’t understand, that any time you prune a tree, you’re hurting it. It’s a wound. But the mechanisms within a tree have over… millennia have learned how to deal with that but also in in my training there’s there’s explicitly two times you cannot prune a tree and that is when the leaves are forming or the leaves are falling because so much energy is being used on that tree to either manufacture that material the leaves the little solar panels that go out on the end of each tree And in the fall, they’re working to set up what’s called an abscission zone between the branch and the leaf. So when it falls off, it itself doesn’t create a wound. But other than that, yes, anytime you prune a tree, you’re going to injure it. It’s just how much and whether a tree can handle it.
Athena Beshur :
And that’s where a certified arborist, someone who’s gotten training on proper pruning, will help speed up that process of healing. For example, if someone prunes a tree and they make that cut right along the trunk, or what’s called a flush cut, then that wound will never heal. And essentially, you’re leaving it open to insects coming in.
Bob Wood :
Well, and that’s true. So, again, that’s a good reason to hire somebody when you’re hiring an arborist that does have the experience, provable experience kind of thing, something like a certified arborist. And, you know, the proper insurance and licensure, that sort of thing. But is the Society of Arboriculture, are they just here in New Mexico? No.
Athena Beshur :
Actually, they’re international. It’s the International Society of Arboriculture. And they offer a ton of resources on why you don’t top trees and how to properly plant a tree and how to properly prune a tree. And that’s where we get our ISA certification from. So they have study manuals and courses that are available as well. So would I be able to find an arborist on a website somewhere that is certified? Yes, you can go to their website and find who’s certified and continues to be certified. We have to take continuing education credits in order to stay certified even after passing the exam and having the on-site training. It’s a pretty easy test though, isn’t it? Well, it took me a while and I had already gone through several master degree courses, but it isn’t too difficult. And if you fail once, try again.
Bob Wood :
That seems to be in the same way if you’re a lawyer or if you’re a doctor. You know, you fail the exam once, you can always go back and try again. You just learn more. Interesting part is the information you don’t know when you go in to take a test and you get a question wrong. Those are the questions you remember. That’s right. And so I think it’s actually a good experience to have that, not heart of a test, but that learning-based type of application. And the CEUs, or you certified the educational units that you must obtain every year, are great to have because, one, you meet other people in some of the training classes. You also learn a lot of new things. I know… I became certified arborist long, long ago. Back when the test was totally different, we actually had the samples on site, 280-some samples to test and identify. And the diseases within trees, I had a great coach by a man named Alex Shigo that I took some classes with. I really respected that gentleman. He’s a legend. But the thing about it is there are people out there who are so great at one or two things, either tree diseases or tree insects or tree growth or identifying where a tree will grow best on what side of the house, that sort of thing. So an arborist, in my mind, kind of wraps all that up. Instead of being a specialist, you’re a general arborist out there that knows a lot about trees, but not everything, which means you always have to keep educating yourself year after year.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right. One of the ways that I continue to educate myself is through the tree inventory. It was developed through the Municipal Tree Board, which is a subcommittee through the Parks Division. The tree inventory offers opportunity for people to go around to the parks and learn about trees while taking all these measurements. So through that, I’ve actually become a much stronger identifier than even after just passing the exam.
Bob Wood :
Well, it must be nice to drive down the street and identify each tree as you go. Actually, it amazes some people sometimes to go, no, that’s a Norway maple or that’s a Rio Grande cottonwood, not the other cottonwoods. But even I have a lot of problems. You come up to and say, identify a poplar. That’s one thing. But how many different poplars are there?
Athena Beshur :
There are many different poplars. We have three main ones here. Well, four main ones in Santa Fe. We have the one that’s a strong triangle shape. It’s a deltoid. And then there’s the thin leaf one. And then there’s the one that’s a little bit in between, which is actually a hybrid.
Bob Wood :
And we’re, in fact, starting to lose a few of our poppers, the quaking aspens in town. Yes. And I guess it’s more an aspect of climate change, but… And a lot of those trees were actually meant, they start growing after a fire in the forest. They kind of fill that up. And as the other trees move in, the evergreens, the ponderosa, things like that, they kind of die off and supply more nutrients to the soil. So there’s a reason for a tree dying sometimes.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right. And up in the mountains, we can use those resources to create contour traps for soil to hold and stability to hold post-fire.
Bob Wood :
And I don’t know how much time we’ve got left. However long you want, Bob. I’ll go till tomorrow. You know me.
Estevan Gonzales :
That’s not a problem at all. Well, we’re getting about that time. But, you know, if you want to, you know, whatever you want to do.
Athena Beshur :
Speaking of fire, could I give a plug to a kickoff meeting?
Estevan Gonzales :
Absolutely.
Athena Beshur :
Well, I know we have some listeners in Las Vegas, or if you’re in Santa Fe and have friends in Las Vegas, we are working on an urban forestry management plan for the city of Las Vegas. And we have a kickoff meeting to talk more about trees and flooding issues that they’re having post-fire. And that’s going to be this next Wednesday, October 16th at 5.30 p.m. It’s going to be in the Highlands University area. Student Union Building, room 322.
Estevan Gonzales :
Fantastic. One more time?
Athena Beshur :
Oh, yes. So next Wednesday, October 16th at 5.30 p.m., it’s going to be at Highlands University in room 322. All right. Fabulous. Is there any place we can go to register for that? It’s actually free and open to the public. We will have some food, but that’s limited to, I guess, the first 70 or so people. And there is a QR code. So if people can’t make that meeting, then there’s their QR code so you can fill out the survey that we have to find out what parks people enjoy most in the city of Las Vegas and where they’re seeing stormwater.
Bob Wood :
Okay. And kind of finish up. Name of your business. Do you have a website? That sort of thing. Because I know you have some very talented people working with you.
Athena Beshur :
Thank you so much, Bob. We do have a website. It’s S-O-W-S-F-E, like Seeds of Wisdom Santa Fe, with the Fe spelled out. Sosfe.com. And there’s some great resources for people there. There’s the tree inventory analysis reports from the past several years, as well as some articles I’ve written.
Bob Wood :
Another thing I like about your website, going to it, is you’re proud of the people that work for you. You push them out there. You drive them. So there’s kind of a synopsis of a lot of your employees right there on the webpage. There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a business grow with quality people that you can recommend out to everybody.
Athena Beshur :
That’s right. We have just an amazing staff. I’m so proud of them. Without that team, we wouldn’t be doing the work we’re doing and that we really need them in order to continue doing our good work.
Bob Wood :
Well, I’ve been real happy having Athena in today and it wasn’t so hard for me to get on the show and that sort of thing. I’m usually pushing a lot of things, but I’m still going to push our website at SaveWaterSantaFe.com. And beg, absolute beg people to start using their eye on water that doesn’t cost anything. It’s right available on the website. All you need is your account number minus the first two zeros, your billing zip code, and you’re on and you’re running. And we’ve saved millions and millions of gallons just advising people on when they have leaks.
Estevan Gonzales :
All right. Well, this is fantastic. I want to send a shout out to Christine and everyone else in your office there, Bob. And I want to thank Athena Besher, principal designer, ISA certified arborist, and certified arborist. urban forester that very cool um thank you so much for being here look forward to i’d love to visit with you again maybe bob uh in the springtime or or next year when it’s appropriate we could talk about um you know springtime activities so absolutely um i learned a lot today and uh thank you for that and uh really appreciate it
