Advice for Picking the Perfect Tree

Tallahassee Magazine has an article about how to pick out a perfect tree for you. The article discusses how to properly chose and site trees that can add pleasure and value to your home. To read the full article click here or see below.

Advice for Picking the Perfect Tree

By: Audrey Post

Advice for Picking the Perfect Tree

Q: What are the best trees to plant in the home landscape? We recently bought a newly constructed house on a large lot in an upscale subdivision, but it’s pretty wide open with just a couple of pine trees. Also, are there any tips on how to plant a tree?

Good for you! Trees enhance property both aesthetically and financially, so they’re a smart addition to your yard. Proper planning and planting will give you years to enjoy your trees and help you avoid problems that can cost additional time, labor and money. They can also help reduce your energy bill. In the South, trees planted on the west and northwest sides of houses have the most impact on your energy consumption.

First, you need to check to make sure there aren’t any restrictive covenants on your property or in your neighborhood that would limit your choices. Those should have been spelled out when you closed on your home purchase, but check your paperwork.

The next step is to figure out why you want trees. Seriously. Most people have a function in mind when they want to add trees to their yard, and the best trees for them are the ones that fulfill that function. Do you want shade for the house? Would you like a privacy screen from the neighbors’ view? Do you want to provide a haven for wildlife? Do you envision trees that bear fruit as well as provide visual interest? Once you know why you want trees, and you’re not limited to just one answer, you’re better prepared to select and site your trees.

(Read More)

Monster Tree Service Featured on CNN Money

Runs a tree-clearing business

Name: Josh Skolnick

Pay: $250,000
Age: 29

When I was 10 or 11 years old I had my own little business pushing a lawn mower for people, and I continued with landscaping through middle school and high school. [By 2005, I had my own] mulch business. I had about 385 residential clients.

[One day], someone called and said they had a dead elm near their pool that no one would come cut down and remove. So I went out and [hired a contractor for the day to] cut down the tree. While I was out there, all the neighbors saw what I was doing and started asking me to cut down their trees, too.

(Read More)

Diane Mastrull: Montco Tree Business Seeks To Go National

Monster Tree Service has been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The online article discusses Josh Skolnick's entrepreneurial story, starting when he created a lawn care and snow-removal company while still in high school.  It also discusses how Skolnick got involved in the tree maintenance industry, ultimately building a multi-millionaire dollar company, Monster Tree Service. See below for the full article.

Diane Mastrull: Montco Tree Business Seeks To Go National
By: Diane Mastrull, Inquirer Columnist

Growing a tree-service business that now has more than $1 million in revenue and is on the verge of something way bigger - becoming the first U.S. franchise of its kind - is not at all what Josh Skolnick had planned when he responded to a call for help four years ago.

Skolnick was just doing a favor for a frantic father of young girls when the Fort Washington native responded to a request in June 2008 to take down a dead elm.

Back then, trees weren't Skolnick's thing. Lawns and mulch were.

By the time he graduated from Upper Dublin High School in 2002, Skolnick was "making over six figures" from a lawn-cutting/snow-removal business he had started when he was 10 or 11.



When most of the Fort Washington native's friends were in college, Skolnick was investing $200,000 in a high-powered mulch blower, sensing opportunity in commercial mulch installation.

It was a solid hunch. By spring 2005, he owned three machines and was "blowing mulch from Long Island, N.Y., to Northern Virginia." By 2007, Skolnick had national accounts installing not only mulch, but playground chips as well.

"It was so large, I ended up selling my landscaping business," Skolnick said, declining to disclose how much he got for it in deference to the local buyer's privacy.

Which brings us to the call in 2008 from the former lawn-care client with the 70-foot elm that needed to be brought down before it fell down. Skolnick said he referred him to two tree-removal specialists who turned out to be either disinterested or too expensive.

(Read More)

Tall Trees May Have Sparked Evolution of Gliding

The gliding animals of south-east Asia have something in common with the Himalayas. Both owe their existence to the collision of India with Eurasia around 50 million years ago. In the wake of the continental clash, tall tropical trees spread from the subcontinent and began to dominate Asian rainforests, providing a perfect environment for the evolution of gliding.

South-east Asia's rainforests are famed for their exceptional variety of gliders. Geckos, Draco lizards, flying squirrels, colugos and frogs have all taken to the skies, suggesting the adaptation evolved several times in the region. Now a study by Matthew Heinicke at the University of Michigan at Dearborn and colleagues has found evidence to support a link between the adaptation and the forests' unusual vegetation, which is dominated by dipterocarps – trees that grow unusually tall and typically mature to lack any branches on the lower 30 metres of their trunks.

"It makes more energy sense for a small animal to glide between trees than to climb all the way down one tree and then climb back up another," says Heinicke.

Heinicke and his colleagues looked at the evolutionary history of the animal groups that contain one or more gliding species. Their analysis suggests that gliding evolved independently eight times in the forests, and that six of those evolutionary events occurred between 20 million and 50 million years ago – the time during which dipterocarp trees were first able to spread from India across southeast Asia.

(Read More)

Trees Need Constant Care, Especially During Summer

Monster Tree Service was featured in an article that discusses the founding of Monster Tree Service, which services Montgomery and Bucks county. Josh Skolnick, founder of Monster Tree Service, gives readers tips for protecting trees during the summer storm season and remind home owners the importance of tree upkeep to limit the damage caused by storms. The article also provides preventative tips, as well as what to do after a storm hits.

Who says money doesn't grow on trees?

What do trees and coins have in common you say? Coins have been mysteriously appearing in trunks up and down the UK country and have people talking! Read the full article posted on the U.K. website, mailonline.com.

Who says money doesn't grow on trees?
By: EMMA REYNOLDS

They say money doesn't grow on trees. But it certainly appears to do so on the mysterious coin-studded trunks dotted around the UK's woodland. The strange phenomenon of gnarled old trees with coins embedded all over their bark has been spotted on trails from the Peak District to the Scottish Highlands. The coins are usually knocked into felled tree trunks using stones by passers-by, who hope it will bring them good fortune. These fascinating spectacles often have coins from centuries ago buried deep in their bark and warped by the passage of time. The tradition of making offerings to deities at wishing trees dates back hundreds of years, but this combination of the man-made and the natural is far more rare.

(Read More)

Madagascar's Bid to Save It's Majestic Baobab Trees

CNN posted an article about Madagascar's struggle to save the majestic baobab trees. Environmentalists are saying that activities like slash-and-burn agriculture and logging for timber and fuelwood and charcoal production are all destroying the island's beautiful rainforests and their endemic biodiversity. Read the full article here. 

Madagascar's bid to save its majestic baobab trees

By: By Errol Barnett and Teo Kermeliotis, CNN

With their unique shape and imposing stature, the majestic baobab trees have been an icon of Madagascar's landscape for centuries, unmovable symbols of the tropical island's luscious scenery.

Six out of the eight species of the long-lived tree are endemic to Madagascar, the island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa.

The stunning country is home to a rich ecosystem that boasts an incredible mosaic of animal and plant life evolved for tens of millions of years in complete isolation. As a result 90% of Madagascar's wildlife exists nowhere else on the planet.

In the midst of it all, the mighty baobab has stood tall for generations, its barrel-like trunk reaching a height of 18 meters.

Often described as "the upside down tree" due to its unusual shape -- the tree's branches look like roots sticking up in the air -- the baobab has sparked many legends throughout the centuries. An ancient myth has goes that when the gods planted the trees, they kept walking away so they placed them upside down.

Read related: Madagascar's 'lemur lady' on saving endangered animals

Communities in Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, have long been benefiting from the deciduous trees -- their fruits are edible, their leaves are used for medicinal purposes, while their large trunks are often excavated to serve as shelters or store water during dry periods.

"There are many interactions with the life of community living around forest," explains botanist Jimmy Razafitsalama.

(Read More)