I think that I shall never see . . . a tree in the bed of a truck. OK, that's not exactly what Joyce Kilmer wrote--but he (yes, he) never visited Stanford during an explosion of campus construction.
The University expects to spend more than $700 million in 1996-2000 to renovate existing structures and build new ones. As a result, "There's an awful lot of tree-moving going on," says Jeffrey Tumlin, '91, project manager for the University's transportation programs office. The uprooting began about two years ago, with groundbreaking for the Science and Engineering Quad. Since then, more than 75 oaks, olives, palms and California sycamores have been trucked from one campus location to another. In the past few months alone, 40 trees were moved to make room for various projects, including expanded parking behind the Wilbur dorm complex.
To relocate a tree, workers build a box around its root structure. The box--with the tree--is lifted by crane onto a flatbed truck and then hauled away. Environmentalists are happy because the life of the tree has been prolonged. Landscapers are pleased because their designs look better with mature trees rather than nursery-bought saplings.
All but 10 of the recent transplants have been successful. Relocation typically costs about $1,500 per tree, but the smallest trees run as little as $700 and the largest as much as $15,000. The price is right, says Judy Chan, associate director of the campus planning office: "You can't buy a 90-year-old oak on the market."
