Planting Forests

The Land Trust’s Annual Tree Sale starts January 6, 2025.

Consider this a plea to plant native trees!  As lush and vigorous as Island forests seem, their health isn’t guaranteed.

To explain why, we need some background:

Take a look at any photo of the Island from the last century, and you’ll notice the wide-open feel.  That’s because, beginning in the late 1800’s, logging and farming de-forested much of the Island.  Both industries shrank, though, in the post-war period.  The result was lots of cleared land lying fallow.  Trees moved back in, producing much of the Island forest we have now.

This passive re-forestation wasn’t natural, though.  The re-grown forest stands tend towards monoculture—one tree species, often Douglas-fir, dominating the stand and suppressing most others.

Making matters worse, re-forestation happened relatively quickly, producing trees that are uniform in age and size throughout forest stands—another form of monoculture.  Trees came back in patches, too, and stands were interrupted even further by more recent development for housing.

Maybe worst of all, about half of the Island’s overall forest cover is same-aged Western Red Alder.  This species is short-lived, and whole forests of it are now in a condition known as standing morbidity—in other words, dying in place from old age.

You can help mitigate these problems by planting native trees on your property.  Here’s how:

If you have forest of the type described above, find light pockets (places where holes in the canopy allow light to penetrate) and plant shade-tolerant trees, such as cedars, vine maples, and grand firs, in them.  You’re starting an understory, one of the layers found in a healthy forest.  If your forest is mostly alder, you’re also planting in anticipation of its disappearance soon.

If you have smaller stands of trees spread around your property, plant native trees between these stands.  This will help reproduce the connections our forest stands once had.

If you have no trees but don’t want a future forest either, plant native trees in clumps.  These can even be at the edges of your lot if you’re worried about shade or blowdown (what it sounds like).  Use clumps, not rows, even if marking a property line.

If you have orphan spaces—patches of ground you’re not using or even noticing much—“adopt” them by planting these spaces with native trees.  Bonus effect:  Your property will feel larger because you’ll start noticing the parts of it you ignored before since there will be trees on them now.

If you have beds of ornamental plants, add appropriately sized native trees to them.  Consider using Red-Osier Dogwood or Vine Maple, which won’t overwhelm your beds in size and can be pruned as desired.

Always plant a mix of tree species rather than one species alone; don’t compound the problem currently challenging the Island’s monoculture forests.