Ask Me Anything and tree planting deception

Sorry, but “Ask Me Anything” has been canceled because there have been too many trolls.

In my Hot Gardens newsletter in the winter of 2006 I suggested that my online gardening friends do just 2 things for the new year: 1) plant a tree and 2) change one lightbulb to LED.

Rio Grande Fax Tex Ash autumn — **The large Fan Tex Ash tree thrives i hot dry climates and has gorgeous golden leaves in Fall.**

Asking people to change light bulbs seems terribly out of date now–everyone has already done it.
But planting a tree in your own garden is as smart and timely now as it was then. Especially since many ads about tree planting around the world and the U.S. are, as I have recently learned, somewhat misleading.

Deceptive ads about tree planting

We’ve all seen the ads telling us that Nepal or Ethiopia or some other country or a mega-international company has planted millions of trees.

And those claims of tree-planting are true and so inspirational!

But the ads tell only part of the story. As it turns out, some uncounted number of these millions of trees are being planted in ‘tree plantations’ and will be harvested in 10 to 20 years.

In a tree plantation there is no attempt to restore a natural forest which is more complicated than just sticking little trees in the ground lined up in neat rows. Trees in a plantation create a monoculture, rather than a diversified ecosystem. Each tree is like the next one all spaced for optimum growth with no smaller trees or shrubs in between. That means in 10 to 20 years when these more mature trees are cut down and hauled away the benefits of the trees will revert back to zero. Tree plantations are a short-term fix to a long term problem of rapidly increasing carbon dioxide in the air and climate change.