I’m glad that someone from Etna saw my post and responded. I appreciate your efforts to defend your town, which shows admirable loyalty and civic pride. Certainly you are doing your job as a council member. As you may have seen, I also tried to mention that Etna has its good points and is a town of salt of the earth people. Budget constraints are very real and I’m sure you can’t do much about the tree situation now no matter what.

A lot of local streets feature successful street tree plantings. Take a ride down Braddock Ave. in Regent Square, Reynolds St. in Point Breeze, or Forbes Avenue in Squirrel Hill and see how their trees are allowed to grow in a more or less natural manner and yet don’t hinder the businesses. Granted, Forbes Avenue has wider sidewalks, but Reynolds St. and Braddock Ave. have sidewalks as narrow as Etna’s. I believe the trees on Braddock Ave. are pear trees, also. (I may be wrong, I haven’t looked at them in awhile.)

As for the expert advice you got in the ’80’s, newer and better varieties are always coming onto the commercial market, so what might have been the best recommendation then might not be as good as what’s available now. The person who advised you might not really be mistaken, just working with the best they could at the time.

There are very few plants of any type that don’t require some kind of maintenance. Even the best street trees need some care. At some point those trees did need to be pruned, but I don’t understand how the town got so far off on the wrong track with pruning that you now have a situation with no solution but to replace the trees.

Having worked in horticulture for more than 20 years, I always notice plants. On the day when I saw these trees, I was in a car with several other people who have no particular interest in plants, and they couldn’t help but comment. If you think this is “something nonsensical to rant about” I can only tell you what impression a group of impartial people got when they drove through Etna. I didn’t write this post to be mean-spirited or make fun of Etna; I simply wish someone would take notice and stop practices that make what should be a positive into a negative. Trees go a long way in creating a good impression of a town. Their cost/benefit ratio is very attractive.

This is just a suggestion that may not work, but have you ever considered that when you do have the funds to replace the trees, could you find a local company with real expertise that would maintain the trees at low or no cost in exchange for signs advertising their civic contribution? I’m thinking this because some of those public flowerbed plantings sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy are voluntarily maintained by professionals in exchange for a little sign in the flower bed. Maybe a good company like Eichenlaub or Emery Tree would do it? Just a long shot, I know.

I would also like to recommend talking to Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest. This group works primarily within the city limits, but they offer training in tree tending. Here’s their website, http://www.pittsburghforest.org/GetInvolved/Training. I think you could get lots of free advice and guidance from them, and maybe round up a few volunteers to help with future tree care.

I sincerely wish the best for Etna. I’m old enough to have a real emotional connection to our little Western Pennsylvania towns, especially the ones which are struggling.

Cordially,
Plntpolice