Last week was a bittersweet time for us at the nursery.  We removed our last Ash crop & burned the piles putting an end to growing that species in the nursery for now.  We have been very proactive in dealing with Ash in our nursery.  The last crop of new liners that we planted was in 2003 (which is the crop we just burned this week).  We have known for quite some time that we would need to remove that block  but just hadn’t made the time to do it. It was a project that we had been dreading, but the time had come to move on.

Due to the state & federal quarantines, we haven’t sold Ash trees for several years now.  We were one of the first nurseries to voluntarily sign the IL Dept of Ag’s Emerald Ash Borer Compliance Agreement.  In keeping with the spirit of this agreement, we developed our own program of species diversity in our nursery to insure that we do not face this issue again in our nursery when another invasive pest moves into the region.

So in moving forward, we are continuing to educate our customers on great varieties to use in place of Ash. We also encourage customers to use a diverse mix of species in every project.  Becky is serving on a EAB Steering Committee for a Trees Forever & US Forest Service partnership program to help prepare communities along the IL/IA border deal with the spread of EAB.  For more info on this project visit the Trees Forever website www.treesforever.org  The IL Dept of Ag has also put together a great website with lots of useful info at www.illinoiseab.org

If you have any questions about Emerald Ash Borer, please give us a call!