If you are a city manager, you have to juggle countless tasks, and that includes ensuring that the trees lining your town's roads are safe. Wondering what that entails? Here are some tips to guide you in the right direction:
1. Schedule Regular Pruning
Pruning is essential from an aesthetic perspective to keep trees looking vibrant and healthy, but it's also important from a safety perspective. If you don't lop off dead branches, in particular, they could easily fall on pedestrians or vehicles during high winds or storms.
2. Don't Forget the Roots
In addition to having a tree service take care of pruning and lopping, you should also remember the roots. Out-of-control root systems could cause sidewalks and roads to buckle and crack, leading to potential accidents and injuries. Ideally, you should talk with professionals about putting in barriers that prevent roots from growing into sidewalks or roadways, and you should also choose trees strategically based on the sizes of their root profiles.
If the trees are already in place and you are having trouble with the roots, you need a tree professional who can address that retroactively. Surprisingly, it is possible to get underground and trim roots as needed, but it's highly skilled work.
3. Choose Skilled Professionals
You should always hire tree professionals when dealing your city's trees. This isn't a job that should be shifted to a general maintenance person. Rather, you need someone who understands the unique biology and life cycle of trees and can maintain them accordingly.
This is also important from a safety perspective. Recently, the number of injuries sustained whilst tree lopping has increased, and in response, WorkSafe has issued a number of guidelines and is visiting sites to make sure everyone is safe. If you have someone who doesn't have the right safety gear or the right training to trim your trees, you are risking their safety. Additionally, you may be liable if they are hurt.
4. Make Sure Crew Has Right Safety Equipment
Even if you hire an outside crew to take care of the trees, you should ensure they have the right safety equipment. That includes everything from fall prevention harnesses to roadblocks to route traffic around the area where they are working. Simply, ask the company's reps how they address safety while you are interviewing them or getting a quote.
With these tips in mind, you can easily ensure that everyone in your community gets to safely enjoy the beauty and shade of your trees.
Share4 July 2017
Hi, my name is Christine. As a lifelong lover of the Shel Silverstein book "The Giving Tree," I have always been interested in the many different relationships one can have with a tree. I own a relatively large property with several trees, and I have worked hard to make those trees an essential part of my life. Some of my trees provide me with food, others provide me with energy-efficient shade that reduces my air conditioning bill and others create recreation opportunities for my kids in the form of treehouses or swings attached to the trees. Still other trees boost my property values just by being beautiful. If you want ideas about using your trees for fun, form and function, please explore this blog.
