We are approaching the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Trager MicroForest! It has been an eventful year: new signage has been added, a paper on our research methodology has been published, and the space has been host to multiple events and field trips.
As the anniversary arrives and the planting season closes, we want to ensure the park is in peak condition. Over the past week, teams from Full Care have been working on the microforest in a variety of ways such as pulling weeds, mulching the areas around shrubbery, applying treatments to some of the mature trees, and increasing the daily watering for the summer.
The biggest change to the site, though, has been the planting of 15 trees to replace ones that have died since the initial planting. This gives us about a 12% mortality rate during the first year, which is about what was expected. Some trees simply did not survive the transplant shock or struggled in the relatively unique urban environment. The trees will be replaced as long as they are under warranty, but after the first few years, we will likely stop replacing trees as we allow natural selection to decide which ones survive and thrive. Some new shrubs were also planted around the site, but their mortality rate was significantly lower than that of the trees.
With all the new plants going in and the trees blooming, its a great time to come check out the microforest!
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