The Pole and I: Saga Continues

By ROBERT SMAUS

Aug. 30, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES GARDEN EDITOR

A few weeks ago, I asked several designers what they would plant to hide an ugly pole that suddenly appeared in my garden (when neighbors took out a huge avocado tree).

I didn’t hear from my own utility company about my plans to hide its pole, but I did hear from Southern California Edison.

Edison was concerned that some of the trees recommended by the designers we talked with were too big, though none grew taller than 35 feet, which is the height of the average pole.

I spoke with Randall Williams, a landscape architect and the manager of Edison’s tree compliance program. He had some fascinating information from the other side of this plants-person-versus-power-company scuffle.

For instance, Edison has about 1.5 million poles, of which 1.2 million have trees growing under the wires. Only about 30% of those are in backyards, Williams said.

The utility trims 740,000 trees each year to keep them out of the power lines, which costs about $28 million, “even though we don’t own any of these trees,” he said. (However, poles and lines are usually inside a power company easement through backyards.)

Edison maintains an inventory of trees growing near power poles, enabling Williams’ department to determine which trees need pruning most often and which cause the most trouble.

Palm trees were far and away the biggest troublemakers, which came as a surprise to me because they can barely be called “trees.” But chances are that if there is an electrical outage in your neighborhood, it was caused by flying palm fronds.

According to Williams, Edison cleans up some palms that are as many as eight blocks from the power lines. During Santa Ana winds, “old fronds become like airfoils and fly for blocks,” he said, knocking down lines.

Palms can’t be pruned, just tidied up, because if you cut off the top, the tree dies. You may have seen some of these topless palms around town, and they are reason enough to keep palms well away from utility lines.

Other problem trees from Edison’s inventory include (not surprisingly) Eucalyptus globulus, better know as the blue gum eucalyptus, but also E. camaldulensis, red gum, and E. polyanthemos, the popular silver dollar gum.

Many people buy the silver dollar type because it looks so good in a nursery can with its nearly round silvery leaves. But it quickly grows to as much as 60 feet tall.

We have eucalyptus on our pole-hiding list, but they are much shorter kinds. Even Edison has small eucalyptus on its list of acceptable trees.

Ash and poplars are other troublemakers, and we don’t recommend them.

One problem plant, the giant timber bamboo, was suggested by one of the designers we interviewed. Believe it or not, Edison has about 200 Bambusa oldhamii growing under power lines in its inventory, which is more giant bamboo than I thought grew in all of Southern California.

It’s a major problem because each new shoot promptly grows up into the lines (they can grow can to 50 feet), so Edison must frequently check them.

Ideally, Edison would like to prune trees near its poles only every five years, though the utility ends up pruning many every three years and a few more frequently that that.

There are about 1,400 power outages every year caused by trees and only a little less than half of those occur during storms. Outages, it turns out, can be caused by trees simply bumping or rubbing against power lines.

If branches wear through the lines’ insulation, trees can carry voltage to the ground, causing circuit breakers to trip or shutting off a neighborhood’s power.

Williams also mentioned that trees touching power lines can carry dangerous voltage in certain weather conditions, so children should never be allowed to climb or build forts in trees close to lines.

It’s Williams’ job to try to reduce these tree-related problems, and it often puts him in the oddly uncomfortable situation, for a landscape architect, of having to have a tree topped or taken out.

Edison would prefer trees within 15 feet of the pole to be only 20 feet tall, and even from 15 to 65 feet from the pole, the company prefers trees that grow to only 40 feet tall.

When I asked if there was a list of acceptable trees to plant near power lines Williams said, “Anything from the list of patio and small trees in the Sunset Western Garden Book would be fine,” but he also put together the accompanying list.

Naturally, none of the trees in this list grows as tall as the typical pole, but as we pointed out in the last article, there are places and ways to position the tree so that even short trees can block the view of the pole.

Beginning in 1999, Edison will have a more detailed list, keyed to customers’ ZIP codes. It will suggest the best candidates for your specific climate and will include some native tree species.

In the meantime, I’m still staring at this ugly pole in my backyard, trying to decide what to plant to hide it.

After hearing the other side’s point of view, I’ll try to keep what I plant well away from the power lines, but I’m not sure I can live with this 20-foot, or the 40-foot, height restriction.

A city filled with nothing but 20-foot trees that don’t even get up to the roof peak on the average house would be a pretty plain place, and it’s already hard enough to find spots for trees on the typical urban property. Plant and pole will just have to learn to get along in my garden.

Recommendations

The Edison list of acceptable trees within 15 feet of a power pole:

Japanese maple (Acer palmatum)

Australian willow (Agonis flexuosa)

Strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo)

Orchid tree (Bauhinia blakeana)

Palo verde (Ceridium floridum)

Redbud (Cercis occidentalis)

Catalpa (Chilopsis linearis)

Citrus

Bronze loquat (Eriobotrya deflexa)

Red flowering gum (Eucalyptus ficifolia)