‘It was the most sour experience I had in the job’: Gardener lashes out at the tree specialist after realizing she could have gotten money from the city if the storm-damaged maple had been declared unsafe instead of saved

New horticulture agent starts a job that is basically plant detective. Drive around, look at trees, answer a lot of what is wrong with this questions, and try not to tell anyone their favorite oak is one good storm away from flattening the garage. House calls are free. Advice is careful. The goal is to keep trees standing when it is safe and say cut it when it is not, without wrecking anyone's wallet more than necessary.

One gardener quickly becomes a favorite. Small town, huge garden, big enthusiasm. She signs up for volunteer training, shows off every new project, calls with every little question, and it is always pleasant. Then a nasty wind event comes through and wipes out most of the town's trees. Her yard loses almost everything except one gnarly silver maple at the end of the driveway.

Author image for Etai Eshet Etai Eshet
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  • "Next time I'll be sure to call an expert"

    Confused call center worker wearing a headset sits at his desk while a panicked female gardener in a straw hat and apron appears beside him holding a garden hose nozzle and screaming in frustration.
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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  • I began work as a cooperative extension agent straight out of grad school and right before the pan mic started.
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  • For those unfamiliar, a cooperative extension agent is the public outreach branch of land grant universities.
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  • Our primary responsibility is to connect homeowners and farmers with university research and encourage use of "best practices" that help the individuals meet their goals in the lowest impact way.
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  • Traditionally, extension was only for agriculture, but it now extends past its agriculture roots, and depending on the university in your state and the office in your specific county, topics can be anything, like financial literacy, family and consumer sciences, community development, mental health, etc.
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  • I was technically an "agriculture agent" but I specialized in horticulture, which meant that I was dealing with trees, fruits/vegetables, lawns, gardens, and bugs.
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  • Unlike a lot of counties in my state, part of our district's daily operation was to make house calls, which was a huge blessing when you start your job in January 2020.
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  • Customer service agent wearing a headset working at a computer
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Those excursions not only made it easier to answer questions, but they kept me from going stir crazy during the pan mic.
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  • There was never a risk of spreading sickness either because all of my time was spent looking at sick plants outside and diagnostic questions like "What's wrong with my tree?" or "Will my tree live?" I would say that out of all of the questions | answered in my 4.5 years on the job, 3/4 of them were about trees.
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  • Those tree questions often came with additional risks that I had to outline to the landowner.
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  • If the tree ended up being a hazard and falling on something or someone, I wasn't strictly liable thanks to some laws in our state that protect educators acting in good faith, but my conscience would never let me live it down.
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  • City cleanup crews hit that maple with a truck and rip a big chunk out of the trunk. Gardener calls the agent out to look. The damage is ugly but the structure is sound. The advice is simple. The tree is safe, just keep an eye on it, because decay will eventually move into the exposed wood. No need to panic, no need for a chainsaw right now.

  • Frustrated female gardener in apron and straw hat yelling while holding a garden hose nozzle against a yellow background.
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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  • Because of this, I always aired on the side of caution when it came to assessing a tree's hazard potential, and was very up front with the individual on my estimation of a tree's risk and the steps they would need to take to keep the tree from becoming a greater risk.
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  • Most of the time the tree was manageable but would take extra vigilance on the homeowner's part to make sure the problem did not get worse.
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  • If the tree was an immediate hazard, I recommended immediate removal. I was barely able to get comfortable with my job before I get acquainted with EP, and I had many interactions with her over my time as an extension agent.
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  • She would call me over the smallest question, and honestly I loved answering them. My personality is one that thrives on mysteries and improvements, so her questions never bothered me.
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  • She lived in a small town and absolutely loved to garden. My visits to her house would last at least half an hour while she showed off her newest gardening experiments.
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  • When she had the opportunity, she participated in our volunteer training (Master Gardeners) and was at many of our volunteer events.
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  • All in all, she was one of my favorite repeat "customers." That makes this specific story all the more confusing.
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  • Toward the end of my third year on the job, the town she lived in experienced some violent straight line winds that toppled about 2/3 of the city's tree canopy, including all but one of her trees, a gnarly silver maple at the end of her driveway.
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  • (Just to put into perspective how much EP loved to garden, I am convinced that she went through an actual grieving process when the rest of her trees were felled.) Initially, she asked me out to confirm that the silver maple left standing was not a hazard, and there were no indications that it was.
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  • I told her as much and that was that. For the moment anyway. Two weeks later, I get another call from EP.
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  • Later, the mood flips. Gardener realizes she might have been able to get money from the city if the tree were declared a loss. Suddenly monitoring the tree feels like unpaid work. She drops the line next time I will call an expert and hangs up. The sting is real. This is someone who knew the agent, knew the science, and still turned on a dime once money got involved.

  • This time she sounds agitated. "OP, someone from the city who was here to clean up the tree debris backed their truck into my tree and took a chunk out of the trunk.
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  • Can you come take another look at it?" No problem. I get to the tree and there is a sizeable gash our of the bark and underlying wood.
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  • "The city truck really did a number on it." No kidding. I went up to observe the wood under the bark, and while it looked nasty, there were still no indications that it was a hazard.
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  • "Do you think it will live?" "The trunk didn't damage most of the underlying wood, so I think that as long as you monitor it for decay, it should pull through." I didn't go into my usual level of detail because of her experience and training, which ended up being a mistake.
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  • Two weeks after that conversation, I got a call from her again, and I don't remember the exact details about why she called, but the increasingly maligned silver maple got brought up again.
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  • After that, things drift back to normal. More calls. More garden chats. No one mentions the silver maple again. The tree stands. The agent moves on with a new little rule carved in alongside all the textbook knowledge. Plants are usually the easy part. People get strange the second reimbursement or repairs enter the picture.

  • "As long as you monitor it to make sure decay doesn't enter the underlying wood, it will be okay." "For the rest of its life?" I squinted.
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  • "Yes?" "You didn't say that when you came to look at it." I squinted again. I didn't think I needed to, with her experience and training.
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  • "EP, once the wood in the trunk is exposed, the tree will do its best to heal the wound but decay will get in there eventually.
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  • The tree still has plenty of life left in it and it's no hazard to your house." Her tone changed immediately.
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  • "So I have to spend time checking on this tree, when I could have gotten reimbursement from the city for damaging it?" | thought I had made this clear during the second visit.
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  • "I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear, but yes, that pretty much sums it up." Then came the zinger.
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  • "Well next time I guess I'll call an expert." \click\ | was stunned for a couple of reasons.
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  • First, our house calls are completely free. Getting a tree "expert" out to her small town to look at the tree and give her the testimony she would need to get reimbursed by the city would have been prohibitively expensive, eaten up any money she would have gotten from the city, and likely would have resulted in a removal recommendation which would mean additional costs.
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  • (We were in the poorest part of our state, so I always tried to keep trees around when I could and had to balance costs against risks.) Second, between my undergraduate degree and employment at landscaping companies/parks and rec departments, I had maybe 8 years of horticulture experience, and I'm pretty sure she still had me beat, so she should have understood what the injury to the tree meant for management.
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  • And lastly, there were the positive interactions I had with her previously, which did not prepare me at all for this bizarre 180.
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  • I sulked the rest of the day (I'm a stewer, not a spewer), but was back to normal the next day and just let it roll off me.
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  • I chalked it up to agitation from potentially losing another tree. The real kicker of this story is that up until I left the job to return to school, I interacted with EP at least 10 more times, and they were all like my first experiences with her: polite, even pleasant.
    via jr0637
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  • She never brought up that one phone call and neither did I. (No reason to kick the hornet's nest.) I'm pretty sure she just left the tree as is and didn't raise a stink about it, and to my knowledge, the tree is still standing, one of the healthiest, strongest silver maples (which isn't saying. much).
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  • It was the most sour experience | had in the job, and all things considered, if that was the worst experience in 4.5 years, I was pretty lucky.
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  • It did give me one important lesson that I will take with me for the rest of my life: When money is involved, people get weird, so be ready for people you think you know to act in completely unexpected ways once money enters the picture.
    via jr0637
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