Pro tip: A city planner in Boise told me they're seeing a spike in tree failures from a specific planting error

We were reviewing a site plan last Thursday, and she pointed out three recent limb drops on new developments, all from the same issue: planting container-grown trees without properly scoring the root ball. She said, 'We're writing it into the code now because the girdling roots show up in 7 years, every time.' Has your municipality started pushing for root washing or scoring on your jobs yet?

2 comments

2 Comments

eva_owens29d ago

Totally seeing the same thing on our sites. Our inspector just failed a whole row of oaks for tight root balls last month.

jamiesingh29d ago

Wait, did they check the soil first? I've seen oaks get flagged for tight roots, but sometimes it's just heavy clay holding them. We had a site where the roots looked bound, but they were actually fine once we washed the soil off. The inspector just saw the outside and failed them.