Chainsaws broke the silence on a recent Saturday morning at Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. The park’s trees received thousands of dollars worth of free maintenance courtesy of some Lynchburg-area certified tree care professionals.
They were volunteering for the park in an annual effort called Day of Service. Their other goal was to promote certification by the International Society of Arboriculture.
The dangerous work involved climbing trees with ropes. No one had spikes on their boots and there was no bucket truck, aerial lift or cherry picker.
First to feel the saw were trees in the yard of McLean House, where Lee surrendered to Grant in 1865. They included a sycamore and two black locusts, all at least 75 feet tall.
Mike Neal and Brian Chapman climbed the towering locusts while Knight Garrard assisted on the ground. They cut out twiggy sprouts with hand saws and undesirable branches with chainsaws.
The arborists were on a mission to take out dead wood and weak branches, which could become hazardous. Hundred-pound limbs fell halfway to the ground and then were lowered gently to the earth with ropes to avoid hitting the fences below.
Meanwhile, Richard Jones and Jarrett Wilkes climbed into the crown of a massive sycamore in the backyard of McLean House. Its lower branches were starting to hang down on the house’s roof, and so some selective pruning had to be done.
All three McLean House trees were definitely improved. The locusts appeared less scraggly, the sycamore looked more balanced and the chance for any damage caused by these trees was reduced.
Jonathan Sledge scrambled up the trunk of an old red maple tree, part of a grove of trees providing shade for the Appomattox Court House building. There he spent an hour cutting out dead branches and wood broken by ice storms. Sprouts that grew as a result of the storms were selectively removed in a process called thinning.
One of the largest trees they worked on was an ash located behind Meeks General Merchandise. Cables were installed many years ago to hold its branches together and prevent the tree from splitting apart.
Jones swung on his ropes from one part of the tree to another, evaluating the condition of the cables and the health of the aged ash. A chainsaw dangled from his waist and he fired it up as necessary to prune out dead limbs.
Last year’s Day of Service earned the Gold Leaf Award from the Mid-Atlantic chapter of International Society of Arboriculture. That is when these arborists climbed and inspected the huge poplar trees at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.
Davis is an Extension Agent for the Virginia Cooperative Extension. He can be reached by calling 455-3740.
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