Trees

THIS WEEK, Fairmount Park unveiled a fancy Web site (www.fairmountpark.org), long overdue, that will help more people enjoy the parks. Its features include interactive maps of the park system and other goodies that can help people find their nearest park, get help with street tree problems, and better navigate the 9,800 acres of the system. For this project, the Fairmount Park Conservancy, an independent fund-raising arm of the park, got Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Accenture to contribute resources to building the site.

Female ginkgo trees are out, so are walnut, crab apple and any tree with thorns. At the same time, pin and red oak, honey locust and sugar maples are welcome in Springfield Township. On Wednesday, the Springfield Township Council will consider a landscaping ordinance. The proposal specifies for developers what trees can and cannot be planted as well as where they can be placed and what type of soil can be used. In a township covering 29.34 square miles, inhabited by approximately 3,000 people, it would seem that there is plenty of empty land for whatever a builder wants to plant.

Councilman Jim Johnson last night told the Riverton Borough Council that the damage from two wind storms in November would cost the borough about $2,000 in cleanup costs. Johnson, who oversees the Shade Tree Commission, said that all borough roads had been cleared of fallen trees, but that stumps were still being removed. A report presented at the work session said 16 borough-owned trees, between 20 and 125 years old, were toppled during the storms. An additional 16 trees were heavily damaged and may have to be removed.

Backers of a plan to carve a ballfield from a stand of trees in Haddon Heights will conduct a tour of the site Saturday morning for residents who have voiced concern about the demise of the trees. The Haddon Heights Youth Association wants to locate a three-quarter-acre ballfield amid 11 acres of trees at the borough recreation complex at Eighth Avenue and High Street. Association vice president Thomas J. Ferrese invited eight concerned residents who attended last night's Borough Council meeting to join him in a tour at 9 a.m. Saturday.

Bensalem High School was the place to strike up the band on Saturday. Eighteen marching bands and guard units competed in the 25th annual "Parade of Colors" at the football stadium.

Frustration was running high at a crowded meeting of the Pennsbury Board of Supervisors last week when the debate centered, once again, on demands that trees be replaced at the Regalwood subdivision. Both residents, township officials and the developer expressed dismay that a solution had not yet been found. Almost out of desperation, it seemed, a compromise was reached. Jack Thomas, the developer, agreed to plant six oak trees. Each would be three inches in diameter. Regalwood is located on 30 acres, just east of Parkersville Road on Pocopson Road.

The presence of trees in the path of proposed parking spaces has prompted the Radnor Township Planning Commission to table a request by the Main Line Federal Savings Bank. The commission on Tuesday asked officials of Main Line Federal to return next month with a more detailed plan showing all parking spaces at its administrative offices, 2 Aldwyn Center on Lancaster Avenue. The bank already has received a special exception from the Zoning Hearing Board for 150 parking spaces, some of which intrude on the 60-foot front-yard setback.

Gloria Coryell, the owner of Deptford Honda, will face charges in Deptford Township Municipal Court on Nov. 3 of illegally bulldozing 35 trees to make room for expansion on the site of her motorcycle dealership. The charge, originally scheduled for a hearing last Wednesday, was continued by Judge Jeff Sprigman because Coryell's attorney, James Gabel of Pitman, said he needed time to prepare. According to Deptford planner Robert Marmion, Coryell is accused of cutting down 35 trees, most of them from 17 to 30 inches thick and 35 to 50 feet tall.

As a sewer line was being put in on Old Bethlehem Pike to service the new Lower Gwynedd Township Building and the proposed Wyndham Woods subdivision, a stack of pipe fell over on a 3-inch-wide tree. According to the township's landscaping ordinance, trees must be protected from harm during construction. Representatives of the Linpro Co., which is overseeing construction of the sewer line, apologized to the township Planning Commission on Thursday night for flattening the tree.

The tiny Glendale Methodist Church was decorated with the usual Easter lilies yesterday. Inside, you could hardly hear the traffic whizzing by. Edmund "Pete" Stafford, however, a direct descendant of one of the church's founders, talked gloomily of the church's future and the course of growth in his home town, Voorhees. "We've had some older people tell us they wouldn't come to church anymore," he said. Almost everything in Voorhees Township is new: new houses, new stores, new schools, new offices.

The Wharton Esherick Museum's exhibition "Poplar Culture, the Celebration of a Tree" at Historic Yellow Springs is an inspired use of a towering tulip poplar that had to be cut down. The end result: the 75 artworks now on display, crafted from the tree that stood outside eminent woodworker Esherick's studio door on a wooded hill in Paoli. None of the works at Yellow Springs, which range from large furniture to a little spoon, tell the full story of what can be done when you can't save a tree.

Peco Energy Co. announced Thursday it would prune the trees along 300 miles of aerial electric lines in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties to improve electric service reliability for about 80,000 customers. The work, which will cost $1.4 million, will continue through early September. Pruning will be performed in the Philadelphia neighborhoods of Bartram Village, Cedar Park, Eastwick, Elmwood Park, Girard Estates, Kingsessing, Packer Park, Paschall, Passyunk Square, Pennsport, Southwest Schuylkill, Spruce Hill, Tasker and Whitman.

Frank Knight, 103, whose decades-long battle to save New England's tallest elm served as an inspiring tale of devotion, died Monday in hospice care in Yarborough, Maine. Mr. Knight, who had affectionately referred to the 217-year-old elm nicknamed Herbie as "an old friend," was being laid to rest in a coffin made from the tree he made famous. The tree succumbed to Dutch elm disease and was cut down two years ago. "To have them together like that is a wonderful thing," said Deb Hopkins, a close friend who succeeded Mr. Knight as tree warden in Yarmouth, outside Portland.

After being upbraided by Pennsylvania's top environmental official because their governor has put the brakes on natural-gas drilling in the region, Delaware residents can say with uncharacteristic pride that their state has gone to the dogs. All it took was a few ill-chosen words from Michael Krancer, Gov. Corbett's secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, who griped in early May about the First State's well-founded reluctance to lift the moratorium on drilling in the Delaware River watershed, which is home to 15 million people.

Over the next 18 months, landscape contractors will replace 3,400 trees lost to development in recent decades in Norristown and four other municipalities in the Philadelphia suburbs. The $2.2 million effort is intended to help manage storm-water runoff, revitalize neighborhoods, and improve air and water quality, according to the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, a partner in the project with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission. Warminster and New Hope, in Bucks County, and Chester and Millbourne, in Delaware County, will also receive trees.

The first time Ashley Berke and John McGinniss saw the house in Fishtown that they now own, they bolted. "It was horrible — depressing!" as Berke recalls the three-story house, whose original section dates to the 1840s. Months went by as the couple searched for a home in the Philadelphia neighborhood, one they loved for its diversity, history and old dwellings, until — a year after that first visit — there was a call from a Realtor suggesting that the property might be worth a second look.

On a chilly spring day, under a clear blue sky, the seasoned players of the Hunting Park Indians run drills over a patch of sandy dirt. In years past, they have practiced over lumpy, uneven fields featuring overgrown grass, rusted gates, and splintered benches. That will all change Friday afternoon when, about 200 yards from their practice spot, a world-class field will be dedicated. The lush, emerald-grass field doesn't flood. There are new bleachers, lights, and a giant scoreboard in left-center field.

A 47-year-old man was electrocuted when he accidentally touched a power line while trimming a tree Thursday afternoon in Montgomery County, police said. The Philadelphia man, who was working for a tree-trimming company, was in a tree in the 1800 block of Pine Road in Abington around 3 p.m. when he came in contact with a high-tension electric wire, police said. A coworker was able to pull a rope dangling from the man to help break the victim's contact with the line, but he was pronounced dead after firefighters brought his body to the ground.

A 47-year-old man was electrocuted when he accidentally touched a power line while trimming a tree Thursday afternoon in Montgomery County, police said. The Philadelphia man, who was working for a tree-trimming company, was in a tree in the 1800 block of Pine Road in Abington around 3 p.m. when he came in contact with a high-tension eletric wire, police said. A co-worker was able to pull a rope dangling from the man to help break the victim's contact with the line, but he was pronounced dead after firefighters brought his body to the ground.

A skydiver was uninjured after he got caught 35 feet up in a tree Friday afternoon in Gloucester County and had to be rescued, a dispatcher said. The mishap was reported at 4:10 p.m. near Cross Keys Airport in Williamstown, the dispatcher said. The skydiver came from Freefall Adventures, based at the airport. Rescue crews reported that the skydiver was out of the tree at 5:36 p.m. - Robert Moran