Roanoke, Virginia

Roanoke sits on the floor of a long valley with mountains on both sides. Mill Mountain, the one with the star on it, rises over the south side of downtown, with the Blue Ridge behind it. The Roanoke River works through the middle of everything. Almost every yard in the city is on the flat river bottom, on a bench partway up a hillside, or out on a slope near the top, and which of the three you own tells an arborist more about your trees than your address does.

Down on the low ground the soil is deep and stays damp, so trees grow fast. Sycamore, silver maple and box elder do well in it, and fast growth makes soft wood that gives up limbs early. Climb out of the bottom and the soil gets thinner and rockier. White oak, red oak, hickory and tulip poplar hold that higher ground, with Virginia pine on the driest shoulders. Older yards carry a third group, the trees somebody planted on purpose a long time ago, and plenty of them are now bigger than the spot they were given.

Weather in a valley behaves differently than it does out in the open. Cold air slides downhill at night and settles on the valley floor, so a winter rain that never freezes up on the ridge can arrive as ice down here. In summer a storm coming off the mountains hits the valley with a hard, straight wind on one side of a crown. Trees keep the record of both. You can read old ice breaks in a crown years later, and a tree shoved the same way for decades holds that lean for good.

The same kind of tree is a different job on flat bottom ground than on a hillside, because the wood grew differently, and the lean and the footing are not the same either. Tree care in Roanoke starts with reading which one is in front of you.