Rant: Saw a huge oak in the park near my house with a mulch volcano you could hide a kid in

I was walking my dog through Riverside Park yesterday and stopped dead when I saw this massive, probably 80-year-old white oak. Someone had piled mulch right up against the trunk in a cone that had to be over 18 inches high and 4 feet wide... it looked like a tiny brown mountain. The bark was already looking damp and soft about a foot up from the ground. You could see the root flare was completely buried, and there were a bunch of those little girdling roots starting to wrap around the base. It just makes me mad because the tree is in a prime spot and otherwise looks healthy, but that mulch is basically a slow death sentence. It's a city park tree, so I'm guessing a well-meaning but clueless grounds crew did it. Has anyone had any luck getting through to their local parks department about this stuff? I'm thinking of calling them tomorrow.

3 comments

3 Comments

victorhill8d ago

Check if there's a local tree advocacy group, they usually have better contacts and know how to talk to city crews.

ward.jamie8d ago

Local tree advocacy groups exist? I've never heard of one in my town, and I've lived here for years. That's a pretty wild idea to me.

sean_torres718d ago

Honestly, it's one of those things you never notice until you need them, like victorhill said. My town's group is just called "Friends of the Park Trees" and they mostly post about saving specific oaks from new sidewalks or organizing volunteer pruning days. They're the reason we still have that huge maple on Elm Street after the gas line work last year. Never would have known they met at the library on Tuesdays if I hadn't gotten that flyer about the ash borer problem.