Damage Control
By Elizabeth Licata
East Amherst
Garden destruction in East Amherst.
Photo by Kim Miers.
It’s a devastating sight. For the past month, as I’ve driven to work, I’ve seen the branches piled in red, gold, brown, and green heaps along the side of the road. When I glance up, I see the jagged edges of broken limbs and trunks outlined against the sky. When I look out my office window, what was once a gorgeous collection of specimen trees obscuring the traffic of Sheridan Drive is now a sad array of hanging branches and fresh saw cuts.

And now it seems that some trees may have been cut down in haste. One poster to the listserv Buffalo Issue Alerts tells a story of forty-year-old trees being cut down on Claremont Avenue in the Elmwood Village area, with no sign-off from a professional arborist. Another tells of two blocks worth of trees being removed from Cumberland, in South Buffalo, by crews who refused to answer the questions of area residents.

Is this hearsay from an Internet listserv? Yes, but a highly reputable one where real names are used, and the anguish over the lost trees seems all too verifiable. In a situation where plants that take decades to reach maturity are at stake, “cut first and ask questions later” doesn’t seem like the best of all possible strategies.

There is no question that trees badly damaged by storms can be very serious hazards to power lines, buildings, cars, and, most important, people, but it is also true that once the broken limbs are removed what’s left of the tree may be more viable than it initially appears. According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), a tree can have seventy-five percent of its live crown removed before it loses its ability to survive. Indeed, the DEC advises that “landowners should not be in a hurry to prune or remove damaged trees that are not hazardous. Pruning is best done in the dormant season [late winter].”

Main Street
Main Street in Williamsville.
Photo by Jade Chen
Arborist and tree activist Joseph Territo, who manages the trees and arboretum for the Buffalo State College campus, disagrees with any set damage percentage for assessing tree damage, stating “It all depends on the species. Oak trees can’t take a lot of crown damage, especially if the leaders are broken. They don’t survive. Some maples and faster growing trees can take more. The leaves are the food factories and they’ve already given the food to the root system for next spring. So if you get the corrective pruning done before buds push out, the tree will heal, though you get sucker growth.

“What I’m concerned about is the second or third year after the storm. Severely damaged trees are not going to produce enough food if they have lost sixty percent of their crown—they will be in stress. In stress, they are more likely to be attacked by insects or disease.”

Territo agrees with many contractors when he notes that “when you get up in a bucket it looks a lot worse. It might look fine from down below, but there could be twenty branches that are fractured and you need to saw them off.”

The ISA-certified arborist pointed out a few factors that may have saved many trees, including the fact that some normally-vulnerable trees survived only because they had already lost their leaves and that trees on the east side of a building were more likely to suffer damage.

Territo agrees with many observers when he sadly notes that the storm would change Western New York’s landscape for years to come. For his part, he was able to cut the list of doomed trees at Buffalo State College from 120 to 105, “just to see if we can find ways to save them. I’m experimenting with a few things.”

Other garden damage

Compared to the loss of our beloved trees, a few shrubs or rose bushes more or less may not seem that big of a deal, but they still represent a large portion of the damage facing area gardeners. And then there are the gazebos, trellises, and awnings lost in the overall carnage.

Main Street
Main Street in Williamsville.
Photo by Jade Chen
For shrubs, as with trees, the urge to prune badly listing canes and branches must be resisted. Branches should only be removed if they are broken. Many hedges and shrubs will recover on their own, as part of their natural tendency to reach for the sun, no matter what. Others could be gently tied or braced with stakes until it is time to prune them in early spring. Keep in mind that many shrubs, such as traditional varieties of hydrangea macrophylla, grow their buds for the next year in the fall, so if you cut down the branches you have effectively removed any change for spring flowering. Protection with piles or bags of leaves or mulch is often a good idea for smaller shrubs.

Some gardeners are making lemonade, using the storm as an opportunity to simplify their landscape; replacing flimsy materials with steel, stone, or concrete; or welcoming the chance to grow sun-hungry plants in a spot where trees had once made that impossible.

There is no real bright side to the irreparable harm caused by October’s freak blizzard; the most we can hope for is that, come spring, the resilience of nature will prove stronger than the vicissitudes of weather.

Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree.


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