Arboriculture is founded on the principles of Plant Health Care (PHC) which is a total health approach to landscape and plant health. PHC recognizes that trees and woody plants are part of a greater landscape ecosystem and proactively addresses all aspects of landscape stewardship.
Essentially, PHC is an active early approach to a homeowner’s landscape, as opposed to a panicked reaction to a pest problem. So why not prevent problems before they start?
A plant health care technician is a specialized tree care worker who can help you avoid these problems by considering the whole landscape when deciding how to best care for plants. PHC technicians control plant problems through careful monitoring of the landscape environment. Because of this, every PHC program is “customized” to fit the homeowner’s property and expectations.
PHC technicians maintain landscape trees and plants by:
The following are examples of some common problems that PHC technicians work to solve:
A PHC technician also will consider your expectations when deciding how to implement a PHC treatment program. One important question is when do you, the homeowner, want to resort to chemical control of problems. Some clients will tolerate a greater percentage of plant damage before requiring action. Some clients will tolerate very little plant damage.
Treatment recommendations are then made to the client based on that client’s expectations. The key to a successful plant health care program is communication between the client and PHC technician. To learn more about implementing PHC,
Air Spading is the use of high powered air to blow all the dirt away from tree roots for pruning, soil amendments and soil compaction.