Kokua Line
Kokua Line
Airport official admits
pruned trees look badQuestion: The monkeypod trees -- beautifully shaped specimens -- have been butchered at Honolulu Airport's Culture Garden. They were topped against all known methods and procedures for trimming such trees. They've essentially been ruined. Why was this allowed to happen?
Answer: A state airport official says the airport relied on a licensed landscape contractor to trim the trees, while the contractor says the company was only doing what the state told it to do.
The Outdoor Circle says the three monkeypods were "topped" inappropriately, although Stanford Miyamoto, Oahu Airport district manager, said an arborist unconnected to the project says the trees aren't as bad off as they appear.
However, because of what happened, Miyamoto was to meet with the Outdoor Circle today to make sure such "pruning" doesn't happen again. "I hope they can give us good advice that we can use in the future," he said.
Mary Steiner, chief executive officer of the Outdoor Circle, was shocked when she saw the skeletal trees after returning from a recent trip. Two years ago, the Outdoor Circle gave the airport a beautification award for its Culture Garden.
Miyamoto acknowledged that when he first saw the trees, it didn't "look good at all."
Airport officials relied on the contractor to have the expertise, he said, and the company had its own certified arborist present "to oversee the proper pruning and trimming of the leaves."
When asked to respond to the criticism, a woman at Islandwide Landscaping said: "The state wanted to trim like that. We only go according to what they want." She declined to be identified.
The trees were cut because their branches had been touching the walls and windows of adjacent buildings, posing a hazard to the public and airport workers, Miyamoto said. Also, leaves and branches ended up in the garden ponds, presenting a "constant source of water pollution because of the decay and resultant organic matter."
Miyamoto said the arborist who called him -- not the one who oversaw the cutting -- said he's done similar "pruning," and the trees turned out "really nice" within two years. However, the caller added that this type of drastic "pruning" is something you would "do in the country or where you don't have an aesthetic problem."
Miyamoto also said the trees weren't really "topped": "Topping is when you cut it close to the trunk."
However, Steiner said several members of the Aloha Arborist Association would be at today's meeting and that none agree that what was done was just pruning.
"Yes, the tree will grow back," she said, "but in the meantime it will cost more money to prune in the future. It's opened up now to all kinds of disease and pests, like termites, which will weaken it. Trees get sunburned. Because the tree uses its green leaves for energy and food, it now doesn't have any food or energy, so it's putting it into a stress situation."
Ultimately, she said, the state is responsible because "they set the parameters."
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