Ever since my father jokingly told me he could hear a tree scream when he cut
off a branch, pruning has been a traumatic experience for me. Cutting down an
entire tree, even a juniper, is devastating. That’s why the junipers were so
thick at the last place we lived, you couldn’t see our hot pink house through
them, no breeze reached our back deck, and the mosquitoes bred to mythical
proportions. Now that we’ve moved onto seven suburban acres, I’ve watched my
neighbors strip every tree from their property except a few struggling live
oaks in the name of “returning the land to its native condition,” although they
have no qualm about replanting with non-native species such as horses, goats,
lawn mowers, coastal bermuda, and winter rye.
I’ve managed to clip a few branches from the junipers that slap me in the face
when I get out of my car, but still I’m torn about these evergreens’ role in
the landscape. They provide habitat, not only for endangered warblers and
vireos and such, but also psychotic cardinals and pushy titmice.
I’ve watched flocks of migrating cedar wax wings and a ring-tailed cat (cutest
damn thing you’ve ever seen this side of a koala bear) feed on their blue
berries. But then I’ll hear a report saying that juniper scrub depletes our
springs and chokes out native grasses. Right after that I’ll hear that cedar
and live oak enjoy a symbiotic relationship, with the deep rooted cedars
protecting the soil and water around shallow-rooted oaks during droughts. I
could live comfortably with this conundrum if I hadn’t begun to nurture the
idea of planting a flower garden in our south facing courtyard, a courtyard now
stuffed with three multi-branched junipers. Should I cut them down or not?
I asked David Diamond, once a biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, now
director of the Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership, the man said to have
written “the definitive study of the subject.”
“Cedars were probably always part of the Hill Country flora, especially in
shallow soils and sloping areas which wouldn’t have supported a fine fuel layer
like grass. Where the soil was deep and flat and really good grass would grow,
that’s the area that probably burned so often that cedars weren’t in there
much,” says Diamond, describing the hill country terrain of a couple of
centuries ago, “before the Europeans came along and started mucking around.”
He adds, “It’s an exaggeration to say there were no cedars, although it’s not
an exaggeration now to say that cedars are coming in everywhere. They grow
everywhere now. They’re a pest, a weed.”
But David, what about my problem? What about those junipers in my courtyard
that flinch every time I walk by because they know the evil that lurks in my
heart? “Cut `em down,” he says, just like that. “When you’ve got seven acres
and the whole darned landscape is covered over with cities or grazed to death,
it really doesn’t make a difference what you do in a courtyard.”
Oh, thanks, David. I feel much better now.
Can I guilt you into sending me more questions? (And those fan letters are
great, too!) Suzebe@aol.comor PO Box 49066, Austin, TX 78765.
This article appears in February 2 • 1996 and February 2 • 1996 (Cover).