Posts by Wei Zhang

A one-year warranty is a very common specification for landscape projects. One year may be enough for smaller shrubs and plants. However, it takes 2-5 years for medium-sized trees and longer for large-sized trees to successfully establish. Most balled and burlapped trees lose 80+% of their root system during digging and transplanting. Container-grown trees come…

Community forests are vital to our communities’ ecosystems by offering many benefits including providing shade and cooling temperatures, reducing stormwater runoff and flooding, removing pollutants from the air and water, enhancing residents’ overall health, and improving the quality of life in our communities. These benefits, however, can only be realized with healthy mature trees, which take decades…

Municipalities impose water restrictions during droughts and when water is in shortage. The most commonly restricted areas is landscape irrigation. While lawns can be restored within weeks, it take decades for trees to grow to their mature size, when the benefits of trees are at the maximum. Water restrictions disrupt the growth of the trees…

Free Webinar on April 30th, 2026, 12:00-1:30 PM (EDT) Among some of the common questions regarding urban trees: Why can’t we save all the rain during the winter months for the trees during the summer droughts? Why most trees do not have deep roots? Why compacted soils are bad for your landscape? Why do trees…

Newly planted trees need 2-5 years of watering to grow back the lost roots during the transplanting process for farm-grown trees. Container-grown trees need similar time to be weaned from the irrigation system. Different watering methods can be used. But all methods will have to deal with the reality: Plant Available Water (PAW) as the…

The COVID 19 pandemic exposed the limited and unbalanced access to green infrastructures (GIs). There are many publications about the benefits of GIs. Interestingly, most of the audiences/readers are the believers. It is more of “preaching to the choir”! At the same time, a significant percentage of population does not (or does not want to)…

Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) is typically built for multi-purposes: reducing peak runoff volume of stormwater runoff, removing pollutants, and providing the benefits of green space as well as for recreational purposes. Vegetation is used in GSIs to achieve these functions. It is also called Low Impact Developments (LID). By definition and by the term, LID…

The most common cause of death of newly planted urban trees is under- or over-watering. To battle this problem, there are many guidelines written to prescribe how much water for newly planted. However, none of these prescriptions addresses the watering application efficiency: How much water evaporates, runs off, lost via drainage in porous soils, and…

Urban trees are vital to our urban ecosystems. Green industry professionals understand the benefits large mature trees provide and their effects on health and quality of life of residents. However, urban trees face various challenges, including soil degradation, pollution (including deicing salts and pesticides), invasive pests, compaction, extreme weather conditions and many other stress factors. …

Sodium Chloride, the most predominant salt used on streets for melting snow and ice, is the lubricant of the modern lifestyle in northern climates during wintry weather conditions. These same streets and parking lots are also the battleground where urban foresters strive to build green infrastructure for canopy coverage, stormwater management and aesthetics. It is…