Contrasting Ohio nursery stock availability with community planting needs

Abstract

There has been a continuing disparity between what urban foresters say they request for community plantings and the stock availability from nurseries. To investigate this, twenty-two of Ohio's urban foresters were surveyed in February 2008 to contrast their planting needs with nursery stock availability. Urban foresters reported planting more than 9,000 trees in 2005 and expected to plant more than 15,000 trees in their respective communities in 2010. At the same time, nearly 278,000 trees [5 cm (2 in)] were reported as being available for sale by nurseries participating in the 2008 Ohio Nursery Stock Survey. The results suggested that maples, crabapples, many hawthorns, and pears generally were present in nurseries in excess of the quantities desired by urban foresters. Conversely many legumes, oaks, elms, lilacs and lindens were lacking in availability. Several other species were somewhat balanced in terms of urban foresters' requests and nursery production. Ohio, U.S. has been dealing with the impacts of the emerald ash borer on Fraxinus species. Increasing taxonomic diversity can be a relatively low cost means of insuring against the possible introduction of another exotic pest that might attack another genus (such as Acer) and requires increased availability of some species currently lacking in availability in the nursery supply chain. ©2010 International Society of Arboriculture.