It’s the last Friday of April, meaning it’s Arbor Day – a chance to celebrate and plant trees at the close of Earth Week.
At the end of April, as trees are beginning to bud and flowers are starting to bloom, Arbor Day comes along to reminds those who celebrate to hug a tree and thank an arborist.
“It’s like they’re saying happy birthday to me. They’ll say ‘happy Arbor Day!’ It is a special little day filled with lots of celebration and work,” said Steve Lashomb.
Steve Lashomb has served as Saratoga Springs’ arborist for nine years. He’s standing in the center of Congress Park in front of one of its few weeping willows.
He’s happy to detail all aspects of his job, just don’t ask him to pick a favorite tree.
“I don’t know—that’s like asking me which one of my parents I like better. I do like the willow that’s out front there. It’s a beast. I’ve actually had people come to visit and drive by that tree and they start calling city hall trying to find out who knows how old that tree is. I don’t know how old trees are, we don’t have birth certificates on them,” said Lashomb.
Since taking up his role, Lashomb has gotten to know the more than 12,000 trees in the city pretty well.
Aside from day-to-day tree management, Lashomb has also gotten his hands dirty setting standards for where trees get planted as well as updating the city’s Urban and Community Forest Master Plan from 2012.
“The goal of every tree we plant is to get as many years out of it as possible. We try to get the best return on investment, if you will. So, I’m always thinking long-term especially with planting. People want to plant this tree or that tree in this little space and I’m like, ‘you can plant it there, it’s small enough to plant it there, but you need to think about what that tree is going to look like at maturity and it’s not going to fit,’” said Lashomb.
Apart from making the difficult decision to take a tree down, Lashomb says dealing with the trees is the easy part of the job.
“I had a work order for dead pine trees. I went out there and did see one, it was chlorotic with yellow needles. I wasn’t sure what was going on with it but I knew that I didn’t want the other pines looking like that one was so we just dropped that one across the island and started cleaning it up,” said Lashomb.
It can be a different story when it comes to the people.
“And before we were done a woman from one side of the island came out and she said ‘oh I’m the one that called it in, I actually wanted all of these trees gone because if they were to fall, they could reach my house.’ And I said, ‘well there’s no indication that they’re going to fall so we’re done here.’ And she’s trying to talk us into taking the others and then the other side of the island starts coming out, other community members and families, yelling at the woman to go back into her house and yelling at us to not touch another tree and I was like, ‘well this about just sums up what my job is – they want them all down or don’t touch them at all,” said Lashomb.
As for Lashomb’s Arbor Day wish? He wants everyone to really think about their work orders before submitting them.
“Or just have people call and say ‘you know what I agree, my tree is alive, you can close the work order.’ If I could get a lot of those that would be the best present,” said Lashomb.
