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Greetings from the Santa Fe Tree Farm,
Welcome to the promised land...where the Dirr manual is the bible and your landscape is determined by time and space, not the size of some contractor's head.
Our services seem to be ever expanding. Our staff has been known to showcase some of the finer points of humanity as well as integral practices towards the landscape. Many of these practices derive from Donn Carpenter, owner and operator of the Tree Farm.
When it comes to creating sustainable communities, there may be no  tool more powerful or more simple than a tree. At first, that might sound a bit far-fetched - the kind of solution to suburban woes one might expect from a sentimental green-thumb, or the Lorax, that trunk-hugging hero of Dr. Seuss's classic conservation manifesto.
But if the Lorax spoke for the trees, the facts about trees speak for themselves. According to the U.S. Forestry Service, the shade from trees surrounding a home can reduce the need for air conditioning by a whopping 33 percent. In winter, evergreen trees planted as a windbreak can reduce heating costs by 10-20 percent.
The National Wildlife Federation estimates that if we planted trees in the 60-200 million places available for them on America's streets, we'd absorb 33 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. The energy savings, the group estimates, would top $4 billion.
Trees trap moisture in the ground, enabling the growth of smaller plants, reducing runoff, recharging our groundwater and replenishing the topsoil with mulch. In hot climates like Santa Fe, trees make walking around bearable so people don't have to rely on their cars for pedestrian errands, and then help suck up those drivers' greenhouse gases when they do.
Let's say you have a home with three residents and with half an acre of trees. According to the Forestry Service, those trees will digest three tons of carbon dioxide and produce two tons of oxygen in a year, enough to make up for the carbon footprint of all the three residents (provided they are not doing laps to WalMart in their Hummer)
Trees add privacy to tightly-packed downtown homes, making the dense urban neighborhoods that are so critical for successful public transportation systems and pedestrian culture so much more bearable. Clinical studies have even found that trees make people feel less stressed in busy urban settings.
Few energy efficient air conditioners or ultra-low-emission vehicles could claim so much.
So why is it that in much of Santa Fe, there is so much more sky than leaves?
Why do so many rooftops sit baking in the sun while the air conditioners hum within?
Don't ask Donn Carpenter, unless you want to get an earful.
"I think trees have largely been ignored in the southwest, especially large trees that will make an impact on our environment," he says. "I see a distinct lack of imagination regarding trees."
Carpenter should know. He runs the Santa Fe Tree Farm, which rescues large trees from property owners looking to get rid of them, nurtures them on a ten acre plot off Agua Fria, then sells them to homeowners looking to shrink their carbon footprint (and grow their property values) with a little well-placed chlorophyll. He's the only arborist in town who nurtures and sells mature, shade-throwing trees.
At least one of every five trees on the farm conies from the Santa Fe area, saving all the fuel that would have been needed to ship them from places like Oregon or Oklahoma, where most of Santa Fe's trees now come from.
The buzzword around the farm is "sustainable landscapes" - an amorphous concept that envisions the seamless coexistence of urban and natural spaces. Homes cooled naturally by shade. Lawns that do not need the life-support of continual watering.
It's a future that Carpenter envisions, but only if people begin to see trees not just as plants, but as tools for creating more sustainable cities.
"We can make up for what we're doing globally just a little, and in the meantime be sitting outside enjoying the shade in the summer," Carpenter says. The farm itself is investing in a new irrigation system that will reduce it's water use by 30 percent.
Unfortunately for Santa Feans, trees do not grow or easily, here. The soil is so alkaline, it kills the saplings of most species before they have time to flourish. Only the hardiest of species can survive here, and the nutrient-poor soil and limited moisture mean it takes years longer for them to grow to any kind of height. To grow three feet taller, a pinion tree will take the better part of 20 years. That's why most nurseries only offer spindly saplings, which can be trucked-in on flatbeds 60 at a time from moister climates and sold quickly.
"There are basically no native trees here. This is not tree country," says Shane Pennington, a manager at Agua Fria Nursery, which sells younger trees. "It's kind of an interesting moral quandary."
The quandary is really a trade-off: in order to reduce our energy dependence and enjoy the benefits of a greener city, Santa Fe must turn to trees species that otherwise would never be here in the first place. Planting non-native species raises concerns among some that native varieties will be crowded out, or need too much water.
Case in point: A woman who ran a local neighborhood association, recently called the Santa Fe Tree Farm looking for native trees to shade a residential park near Airport Road "I told her there's no such thing as a native shade tree in Santa Fe," Carpenter said. "So she wouldn't buy any trees for the park. Now, you go down to the park, and there's just a bunch of dead weeds baking in the dirt. Nobody goes there."
The compromise, according to Carpenter, is simple: plant wisely. Non-native trees make no sense in sensitive areas, like those along arroyos. But in urban areas, a tree of almost any type does more good than harm.
Around homes, Carpenter suggests planting large, shade-throwing trees (i.e. hardy, non-native varieties that don't suck too much water) on the south and west sides of a home. Deciduous trees also allow sunlight through in winter, which can help heat the house.
While fitting perfectly in some landscapes, varieties like willows, Japanese maples and even aspens can be too water dependent to be sustainable choices for much of Santa Fe, according to Pennington.
Outside the first ring of trees, Carpenter recommends planting native evergreen varieties - pinon, juniper or ponderosa pine ~ to maintain the natural flora of the land and build windbreaks to block winter gusts.
On sun-backed city streets, leafy shade trees should be considered required landscaping for any sidewalk, the same way streetlights are required for streets, or shelters for bus stops, Carpenter suggests.
Trees farmed locally have the best chance of flourishing since they have already proven that they can survive in Santa Fe's inhospitable climate.
"A tree has been already acclimated somewhat at least a season's with of time to that particular microclimate in Santa Fe, as opposed to having it shipped in from a nursery," says Woody Nelson, director of communications for the National Arbor Day Foundation.
The foundation provides a list of the types of trees that flourish in climates like Santa Fe's at its website, www.arborday.org.
Says Nelson: "There is such a diversity of trees and woody agriculture that can serve our homes throughout the year, regardless of the season."
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