Olmsted's pruned trees ready for new storm

By Chris Dierken and Leif Reigstad
Bengal News West Reporters

            In 2006, the October surprise storm  wreaked havoc on Buffalo’s landscape.

            Fierce winds toppled trees, and heavy snowfall burdened branches that had yet to shed their leaves, littering front lawns with the snapped limbs of large oaks and maples that line the city’s iconic canopy-covered streets.

            Now, seven years later, Buffalo’s trees and parks have made a full recovery, and should another surprise storm hit the city, the trees will be better prepared thanks to the  Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy's pruning crew.

             “The October storm really brought to light how the trees really were badly pruned,” said Olmsted superintendent of parks Bob Stokes. “It was a catastrophic storm, but I think it brought to light, when you saw how the parks were just devastated, that we really had to step up the care of the trees.”

            After the storm, the conservancy put more of an emphasis on making trees wind resistant, dedicating a crew to prune the trees. Pruning in this case means clipping the branches in a way that makes the tree built better for facing high winds.

            “It’s like preventative maintenance, if you will,” Stokes said. “We’re going out and trying to take care of the problem before it becomes a bigger problem.”

            Stokes and arborist Mark Brand are both experts in the complex process of pruning.

            “You go through the whole crown, and you remove branches in strategic locations to reduce the wind load on any given branch or a tree as a whole,” Brand - said, wearing tan gardening gloves and holding a pair of clippers. “If there is a weak branch, you can reduce the load that it will take in a storm by pruning some of the ends off, and it’s less likely to fail. If you thin the whole tree, it’s less likely to uproot.”

            Brand said pruning does not make trees wind resistant overnight. Instead, it is a long process.

            “A good pruning, you can’t do it all at one time,” Brand said. “It takes multiple prunings over a period of time to really achieve the desired results in a tree.”


Mark Brand, on pruning techniques:

            In the middle of November, Stokes and Brand’s process was put to the test when strong winds battered the city of Buffalo over the weekend. After the storm settled, there was minimal damage done to trees in city parks.

            Even trees in Front Park and LaSalle Park, were largely unaffected by the high winds coming off of Lake Erie.

            Brand said that this is partly because of the pruning, but it also has to do with the way trees grow when they’re planted in areas that typically experience high winds.

            “Trees, if they’re planted when they’re young in an area that’s windy, they’re going to grow stronger,” Brand said. “They grow thicker stems, and they’ll have more anchorage roots on the windward side.”

            Stokes and Brand said the best time to prune is the fall and spring.

            But “there is always more work to be done,” Stokes said, adding that volunteers are welcome to help prune trees year-round.