Ivydene Gardens Home:
Demise of trees in pavements in St. Peter Port, Guernsey caused by people to their
Roots

READING THE TEXT IN RED ON THIS PAGE WILL MAKE IT EASIER FOR YOU TO USE EACH PAGE in my educational website.

THE 2 EUREKA EFFECT PAGES FOR UNDERSTANDING SOIL AND HOW PLANTS INTERACT WITH IT OUT OF 10,000:-

• THE INTERACTION BETWEEN THE 2 QUARTZ GRAIN SIBLINGS, and
• HOW ROOTS OF PLANTS ARE IN CONTROL IN THE SOIL
• before continuing in this website.

Explanation of Structure of this Website with User Guidelines Page for those photo galleries with Photos (of either ones I have taken myself or others which have been loaned only for use on this website from external sources)

Guernsey has decided to replace the ground exposed within a small distance from the trunk of trees within pavements in St Julian's Avenue in St.Peter Port with tarmac.

This has also been done in tarmaced paths in Candie Gardens. I noticed that the garden beds in Candie Garden were well weeded with bare soil between the plants. This seems to be the accepted practice in Guernsey. Shame that the trees/shrubs in that garden are not mulched in order to provide humus to feed them and keep the soil as soil instead of it returning to being sand, silt or clay - see soil structure diagram in Tree Problems in pavements in Funchal, Madeira in February 2018 page for the linkage between sand, clay domains, bacterium and organic polymers.

The Death of Tree Roots in Madeira caused by people page details why this is detrimental to the trees. On the right hand side of that page is a practical solution to keeping your trees.

Currently you will lose both the mature trees and the juvenile trees due to lack of oxygen, water, nutrients and soil that can be penetrated by the tree roots.

Text for Photo 1 and 2
 

Photo 1 taken by Chris Garnons-Williams In Guernsey.

 

Photo 2 taken by Chris Garnons-Williams In Guernsey.
Same photo as in Photo 1, but this is the complete Camera image, so that you can see exactly what the camera took.

Page 3 of Perry's Professional Map of Guernsey showing
St Julian's Avenue and Candie Gardens in
St Peter Port, Guernsey.
IMG 0067 image is 4000 x 3000 pixels.

One of the trees still with its small exposed area of ground for it to receive water, etc in
St Julian's Avenue in St Peter Port, Guernsey.

If this tree is 5 metres high, then it's roots spread at least 5 metres in radius from the trunk.

In geometry, the area enclosed by a circle of radius r is π r2. Here the Greek letter π represents a constant, approximately equal to 3.14159, which is equal to the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter.

Area = 3.14 x 5 x 5 = 78.5

It is likely that the exposed ground does not exceed much more than 1 square metre, so we have been generous in providing access to rain, nutrients, oxygen etc for only 1.27% of the roots of this tree. The others which this space has been covered with tarmac, or in the case of juvenile trees with a 10cm square hole, then 0% of the roots have any access. This is of course the recommended treatment for babies - provide mother with milk but no way for the baby to receive it.

IMG 0021 is 4000 x 3000 pixels.

Newly planted juvenile tree surrounded by tarmac in
St Julian's Avenue in St Peter Port, Guernsey.

IMG 0006 is 4000 x 3000 pixels

Same newly planted juvenile tree surrounded by tarmac in
St Julian's Avenue in St Peter Port, Guernsey.

IMG 0007 is 4000 x 3000 pixels

I would advise that the rubber ties should be about 50 cms (20 inches) above ground, so that the tree trunk will flex in the wind and thus decide to strengthen itself as the tree grows to be able to support the upper foliage and branches. If the tree ties are too high, then when they are removed, the trunk may not be sufficiently strong in high winds to prevent itself from being snapped. This 2 post system is correct, since this kind of support is only required during the first 2 or 3 years in this position. Then when the ties are removed, the posts can be also without damaging the tree roots.

Mature tree surrounded by tarmac in
St Julian's Avenue in St Peter Port, Guernsey.

IMG 00016 is 4000 x 3000 pixels

Redcurrant growing in Victorian Walled Kitchen Garden in Guernsey.
Many people have spent a long time and raised a lot of money to recreate this walled kitchen garden and are in the process of rebuilding one of the original structures. It would be a good idea if they contacted Garden Organic at Ryton Gardens, which has recently been taken over by Coventry University to teach them how to grow their plants in their walled garden as they would have been grown when the garden had been functioning before.

IMG 0055 is 4000 x 3000 pixels

As in many gardens that I saw in Guernsey, there is no mulch or green manure, which feeds, shades the ground, prevents wind and sun drying out the ground as well as reducing weeding.

I have copied this Plant Care section from the Introduction Page of the
Colour Wheel Use of Plant and Flower Shape Gallery.

It is a pity that the people in Madeira and Guernsey seem to have lost the
knowledge of their forebears

• in that plants have needs and they prevent those needs from being
  realised so that the vegetable/flower bed looks neat and tidy instead of
  having an organic mulch above it or green manure to feed it, recreate
  the soil, keep the moisture in the ground ( I have elsewhere in this site
  given the example of Melcourt Industries Ltd who divided a field in half
  and in half just planted the field with juvenile fruit trees and soaked the
  ground in April; the other half they planted with the same type of fruit
  tree, soaked the ground in April and laid down a Melcourt Organic Mulch.
  They measured the moisture level in the soil throughout a very hot
  summer. The trees without the mulch were suffering from dehydration by
  August, whereas the others with their mulch were fine, healthy and still
  with soil moisture. Besides taking the soil moisture levels during each
  month from April to August no further work was done to that field).
• The same people in each country of the world think that trees surrounded
  up to their trunks by GRASS, tarmac, concrete, or metal, will quite happily
  grow and provide the calming influence on the population as well as the
  oxygen for them to breath.

Plant Care

This is a photo of a Ryegrass plant, that was growing in Type I MOT Roadstone on
flat ground in a private garden. You will note that it has a great deal of fibrous
root - apparently in American Baseball Stadiums each grass plant has over
100 miles of root.

.

That root in cooperation with worms, bacteria etc takes in food, which is brought
down from the surface by water (usually rain, but can be by irrigation) either in
tunnels created by the worms, moles, etc or when the ground cracks open in the
summer when the clay soil dries up and shrinks - clay soil can absorb 40% of its
own volume before it turns from a solid to a liquid. That root also breathes in
oxygen then expels carbon dioxide (Click on Carbon Cycle) and nitrogen
(Click on Nitrogen Cycle) ALL THE TIME. That is why the Action Plan for YOU to
Do with Your Soil Page could help.

If you buy Sharp-Washed-Sand from a Builder's Merchant and put that into a clean
pot round a plant, then using NPK fertilisers the roots of that plant can absorb that
food dissolved in water. Once you stop supplying that water and food, that plant will
die (it is like saying that for you to survive, that you need a lb of glucose each day,
so I sit you down outside and put 365 lbs of glucose round your feet. It rains and
within 6 weeks that glucose has either been eaten by you or dissolved in the rain and
washed down into the ground below your feet. Then you complain to me that
you are hungry).

To make that Sharp-Washed-Sand into soil, you need dead plant material, shit from
animals or dead animals, bacteria, worms that can be eaten by the animal, bacteria
and worms to bind those sand particles together with clay and organic matter
(Click on Soil Structure). That soil can then hold onto the some of the rain
(Click on How does Water act in the Soil) with food for the animal/plant in it, before
the excess rain drains through below the top soil to the sub-soil and the food in it is
then lost to the plants above it. The easiest method of supplying the dead plant
material is to collect your potato peelings, tea bags, coffee grounds in a bucket under
the sink before putting them on the ground surface round a plant. Then, mow the lawn
and put 1cm or 0.5 inch depth of grass mowings on top to complete the organic
mulch, provide water from the grass and nitrogen from it to compost the peelings
below. The worms having made tunnels in the soil may also eat the peelings. When it
rains the water can absorb nutrients from that mulch and take it down using those
tunnels. WHEN THOSE TUNNELS ARE FULL OF WATER AND A CLOD-HOPPING HUMAN
WALKS ON IT, THEN IT COLLAPSES AND NO LONGER FUNCTIONS. If it rains heavily,
allow the ground to recover for a couple of days before walking on it.

You can then see that a Sandy Soil is much easier for the roots of a plant to get into,
but when it rains it dries up quickly and then the food in it gets washed through it very
quickly (Click on How are Chemicals stored and released from Soil?). It is also easier
for the gases to get in and out.

A clay soil is more difficult for plants, since when it rains the tunnels fill up with water and
thus could drown the roots. Put sand round its roots up to the surface of the soil and this
will combine with the clay to stop the roots from being drowned or without Nitrogen and
Carbon gas exchange. If your lawn is soggy when it rains, then cut the lawn short when it
is dry and apply 25Kg of sand over a 5 metre x 5 metre area once a month for 3 months
during May-September and it will change the soil structure to lessen that.

A mixture of Clay and Soil is best (Click on Soil Formation - What is Soil Texture?).

I saw a yew tree that had been planted in a churchyard in 2000 as a 2 foot high tree. In 2009
it had reached 7 feet high and 3 feet across. Why had it not grown?

It was planted on a 30 degree slope in clay/sand soil with grass growing round its base. It had
the following 3 reasons for failure to grow:-

• When it rained, the water would either be taken up by the roots of the grass (Click on
  the roots of just 1 plant in the photo above) or run off down the slope.
• The grass would take all the nutrients out the top soil leaving none to be washed down
  to the roots of the yew tree.
• The grass would be using all the oxygen that came down the tunnels, leaving none
  for the yew tree

So, I carefully removed the grass and its roots from around its base out to the tips of the tree
branches and mulched that bare ground with shrub prunings / grass mowings to a 4 inch depth.
A year later it was growing quite well with new leaves and an increase of density of branches.

In Maderia I saw a mature olive tree - which had been transplanted from the nursery to a roof
garden - a year after it was planted. It was on a mound with brazilian grass growing round its
base. It was dying from dehydration even though it was irrigated every other day - the grass
was growing well.

An organic mulch about 4 inches deep on weeded soil makes garden maintenance very easy.
Once a week you walk round the garden and using a swoe (a hoe has 2 arms to the horizontal
blade, a swoe only has 1 so that you can stand on the lawn and be able to hoe behind the plant
in front of you) hoe through the weed root in the top of the mulch and remove the uprooted
weed. I find that Spent Mushroom Compost is light, easy to lay, easy to hoe and lasts a relatively
long time. You may lose about 50% each year. If you do not apply any mulch and you do have
groundcover plants covering all the soil, then you will enjoy permanent weeding chores like the
painters on the Forth Bridge last century - you come to the other side and have to start again
immediately. When you prune your shrubs/trees/hedges then put the prunings on your uncut
lawn. When you deadhead your bulbs or remove perennials, shake off the earth from the roots
and place on the uncut lawn. Using a rotary mower cut your lawn and it will cut the grass and
your prunings/perennials into small bits which you then mulch your flower beds/hedges with.
In the autumn, set your mower to its highest cut and transfer the autumn fallen leaves onto
the lawn before mowing them and mulching as before. Continue mowing once a week untill
all fallen leaves have been removed.

If your garden is on a steep slope - I maintained one that had half-circle beds with lawn paths
round them - the diameter of the circle was usually level and the half-circumference went down
the slope. The ground had flint and chalk in it and the plants in it were usually the inverted
cone shape. When it rained, the stones would be washed off onto the lawn paths and damage
my mowing machine. Providing any mulch applied to those beds is covered with grass mowings,
then that problem - of the stones being washed off by any rain however hard onto the
paths - is stopped.

Roots of plants that you put into your garden do extend and grow, but the existing roots do not
move by themselves to better places. You have to untangle them and spread them out yourself.
I planted a blue cedar in my front garden and 9 years later it died. When I took it out, I found
that the roots which had been going round the inside of the pot before I planted it had expanded
sideways to fill the complete space between them as if they were still in the pot. There were very
few roots which had grown away from this rootball and so the plant died due to dehydration,
lack of food and lack of gas exchange in the ground.

A minor point that people forget is that you only live because you can breath oxygen, and plants
provide it. So please look after the plant so that they have food, water and air (best soil has at
least 30% air in it) on a regular basis, just like you do for your children.

.

This website is being created by Chris Garnons-Williams of Ivydene Horticultural Services from it's start in 2005.

It should be remembered that nothing is sold from this educational site, it simply tries to give you the best advice on what to use and where to get it (About Chris Garnons-Williams page details that no payment or commision to or from any donor of photos or adverts I place on the site in the Useful Data or other sections is made to Chris Garnons-Williams or Ivydene Horticultural Services). This website is a hobby and not for direct commercial gain for Ivydene Horticultural Services. There is no Google Adscenes or Search Facility in this website.

The information on this site is usually Verdana 14pt text (from December 2023, this is being changed from 14pt to 10pt) and all is in tabular form. This can be downloaded and sorted using WORD or other word-processing software into the order that you personally require, especially for soil subsidence, the Companion Planting Tables and the pages in the Plants section. This would be suitable for use in education as well.

I put jokes in at various places to give you a smile.

Site design and content copyright ©April 2007. Page structure amended October 2012. Page structure changed February 2019 for pages concerning Trees in pavements alongside roads in Madeira. Chris Garnons-Williams.

DISCLAIMER: Links to external sites are provided as a courtesy to visitors. Ivydene Horticultural Services are not responsible for the content and/or quality of external web sites linked from this site.  

Due to intensive farming techniques and chemical fertilisers this has occurred:-
A 2004 US study found important nutrients in some garden crops are up to 38% lower than there were at the middle of the 20th Century. On average, across the 43 vegetables analysed, calcium content declined 16%, iron by 15% and phosphorus by 9%.

The BBC has produced an article as to why modern food as lost its nutrients.
 

The following about trees in pavements show why when the roots are denied access to air, water and nutrients even the fungi cannot work to support the trees.

Pavements of Funchal, Madeira
Damage to Trees - Pages
1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13
for trees 1-54,
14, 15,
16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
for trees 55-95,
26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
36, 37,
for trees 95-133,
38, 39, 40,
41, 42, 43, 44, 45,
for trees 133-166
 

The following addition of this mulch improved the clay soil, so that
neither the fungi nor the plants would drown.
 

A 150mm deep mulch of mixed peat, sharp washed sand and horticultural grit was applied on top of a heavy clay soil to improve its structure, and stop the plants therein from drowning, at £10 a square metre. The mix was:

• 4 cubic metres of Peat (to provide the Organic Polymers/Organic Matter and Carbon.)
• 2 cubic metres of Sharp Washed Sand (to provide the sand for the production of microaggregates)
• 2 cubic metres of Horticultural Grit (to provide larger particles for aggregation)
• 25kg of Garden Lime (to provide Calcium for the plants and allow clay minerals to bond together to form domains. Once clay minerals are stacked together to form domains, they can then bond with organic matter to form microaggregates)
• 25 kg of Sulphate of Iron (to provide Iron to act as a trace element and to create soil colloid for buffering chemical nutrients in the soil for later use by plants)
• 25Kg of Sulphate of Potash ( to provide fertilizer for the plants)

The following was then sent to me:-

and the following was sent to me in October 2004:-

An unsuccessful planting scheme had left bare areas of garden as plants failed to survive winter in the waterlogged clay soil. The loss of numerous plants and the cost of replacing them had left us disheartened. It was evident that remedial action was need in the form of a mixture of gravel, sand and peat to create an organic loam. Approximately six inches was added in April and left to settle and do its job. By July there was a noticeable difference in the quality of the soil and the plants. Shrubs with sparse, mottled leaves were looking glossy and robust, overall growth had increased (including the weeds!) and the soil was holding its moisture well. But the biggest difference came in the confidence it gave us to transform the garden. The borders used to be a no-go area between May and September as the clay baked and cracked, but the new soil was easy to handle and weeds could be successfully removed. We realised that there are no quick fixes - the key to a healthy garden is rich, nutritous soil. Once our plants began to thrive we were optimistic that, with good advice, we could create a garden to be proud of.

More Details

Cultural Needs of Plants
from Chapter 4 in Fern Grower's Manual by Barbara Joe Hoshizaki & Robbin C. Moran. Revised and Expanded Edition. Published in 2001 by Timber Press, Inc. Reprinted 2002, 2006. ISBN-13:978-0-
88192-495-4.

"Understanding Fern Needs
Ferns have the same basic growing requirements as other plants and will thrive when these are met. There is nothing mysterious about the requirements - they are not something known only to people with green thumbs - but the best gardeners are those who understand plant requirements and are careful about satisfying them.
What, then, does a fern need?

All plants need water. Water in the soil prevents roots from drying, and all mineral nutrients taken up by the roots must be dissolved in the soil water. Besides water in the soil, most plants need water in the air. Adequate humidity keeps the plant from drying out. Leaves need water for photosynthesis and to keep from wilting.
All green plants need light to manufacture food (sugars) by photosynthesis. Some plants need more light than others, and some can flourish in sun or shade. Most ferns, however, prefer some amount of shade.
For photosynthesis, plants require carbon dioxide, a gas that is exhaled by animals as waste. Carbon dioxide diffuses into plants through tiny pores, called stomata, that abound on the lower surface of the leaves. In the leaf, carbon dioxide is combined with the hydrogen from water to form carbohydrates, the plant's food. This process takes place only in the presence of light and chlorophyll, a green pigment found in plant cells. To enhance growth, some commercial growers increase the carbon dioxide level in their greenhouses to 600ppm (parts per million), or twice the amount typically found in the air.
Plants need oxygen. The green plants of a plant do not require much oxygen from the air because plants produce more oxygen by photosynthesis than they use. The excess oxygen liberated from the plants is used by all animals, including humans. What do plants do with oxygen? They use it just as we do, to release the energy stored in food. We use energy to move about, to talk, to grow, to think - in fact, for all our life processes. Although plants don't talk or move much, they do grow and metabolize and must carry on all their life processes using oxygen to release the stored energy in their food.
Roots need air all the time. They get it from the air spaces between the soil particles. Overwatering displaces the air between soil particles with water, thereby removing the oxygen needed by the roots. This reduces the root's ability to absorb mineral nutrients and can foster root-rot.
Plants need minerals to grow properly. The minerals are mined from the soil by the plant's root system. If a certain mineral is missing, such as calcium needed for developing cell walls, then the plant will be stunted, discoloured, or deformed.
Some plants tolerate a wide range of temperatures, whereas others are fussy. If the temperature is too high or low, the machinery of the plant will not operate satisfactorily or will cease entirely.

The basic needs of plants are not hard to supply, but growing success depends on attending to these needs with care and exactitude. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of these requirements, with the exception of mineral needs, which are discussed in Chapter 5."

It is worth remembering that especially with roses that the colour of the petals of the flower may change - The following photos are of Rosa 'Lincolnshire Poacher' which I took on the same day in R.V. Roger's Nursery Field:-

Closed Bud

Opening Bud

Juvenile Flower

Older Juvenile Flower

Middle-aged Flower - Flower Colour in Season in its
Rose Description Page is
"Buff Yellow, with a very slight pink tint at the edges in May-October."

Mature Flower

Juvenile Flower and Dying Flower

Form of Rose Bush

There are 720 roses in the Rose Galleries; many of which have the above series of pictures in their respective Rose Description Page.

So one might avoid the disappointment that the 2 elephants had when their trunks were entwined instead of them each carrying their trunk using their own trunk, and your disappointment of buying a rose to discover that the colour you bought it for is only the case when it has its juvenile flowers; if you look at all the photos of the roses in the respective Rose Description Page!!!!