Rooting Out Problems
OJAI — Walking toward a 400-year-old oak, Ojai arborist Paul Rogers immediately spotted a problem. The base of the trunk was covered with sawdust and cracks, sure signs of trouble.
“You’ve got something going on here,” Rogers told concerned owners Dennis Mullican and Patty Fry as he started digging into the soil along the base. “I’m going to see if I can find it.”
Rogers, hired to give the tree a checkup,
diagnosed oak root fungus. He pounded his mallet around the trunk, and the hollow sounds told him a 3-foot stretch of the base was dead. Rogers prescribed digging a trough around the base to prevent moisture from settling there. Do nothing, he warned, and the rot will spread and kill the tree.
Rogers’ advice may have been just in time to save another tree, one of thousands
helped during his 35-year-career. Demand for his services, as well as those of other arborists, is on the rise in Ventura County as trees age, people become more concerned about saving them and more communities adopt and tighten tree protection ordinances, he said.
A landscape consultant, the Canadian native, 66, provides advice on tree care for cities, developers and private landowners, everyone from people living on small lots with a single oak to wealthy clients like actress Rene Russo, whose Beverly Hills home has expansive grounds.
For fees ranging from $40 to $15,000 per job, Rogers identifies why trees are ailing, whether they are a hazard and how they would be affected by development. He also testifies in court cases about the value or safety of trees.
“He is extremely reputable,” said Ojai Senior Planner Doug Hooper. “He always does what’s best for the community and takes great pride in his work.”
This is a departure from Rogers’ first job as an insurance company payroll processor. Drawn to Southern California by the perfectly green turf he saw on TV during a Rose Bowl game, Rogers moved to the U.S. and studied ornamental horticulture. He graduated with honors from Cal Poly Pomona.
Rogers tells people what should be done with trees, but he never actually does the work himself. That way, he said, clients know he isn’t telling them they should chop down a tree because he is looking to increase his income. “My goal is always to do anything I can to save the trees.”
He said the most excruciating decisions of his career came this spring when he recommended that the city of Ojai cut down three dying oaks in Libbey Park because they were destined to fall and posed an immediate danger because of their large size and location in heavily trafficked areas. After five other specialists concurred, the city chopped them down.
Although the tree removal sparked protests and emotional tributes, more recent accidents have shown people the damage trees can do. On Aug. 2, a Libbey Park oak dropped a 24-foot-long branch on three people attending a concert. In June, a giant oak fell on a truck and a garage in nearby Meiners Oaks. And two weeks earlier, 10 people were injured when a massive oak split in half and fell at the World University of America, a small private college in Ojai.
Rogers is in the process of determining the health and safety of the more than 100 trees in Libbey Park. Recently, he started his workday there by checking on a catalpa tree that had been invaded by insects called sharpshooters; next he reviewed sycamores covered in microscopic mites.
His biggest concern in the park is a 350-year-old oak that he fears must be the next to be removed. Fungus has overtaken a deep groove in its trunk, and the tree’s base is hollowing out. The exposed core is rotting. A tree with a rotted trunk cannot support itself, and a nearby path makes that prospect particularly frightening.
Rogers left the park that morning and headed to his first scheduled appointment with the back of his black Toyota Camry station wagon loaded with a pickax, hard hat and other tools of his trade.
On the way, he decided to check on a sycamore he had noticed while driving along Ojai Avenue. No one asked him to inspect the browning tree in front of the Ojai Valley Women’s Club, but he did anyway. He pulled off a leaf, noticed its back was covered with mold and looked through a magnifying glass at the bugs on the front of the leaf.
“I’ve never seen the problem to this magnitude. You can see every leaf is seriously infected,” Rogers said. “The question is, with what?”
Two-spotted mites were attacking the tree’s leaves, and the tree needed to be sprayed with pesticides, Rogers decided. But the insects are just a symptom. They attack when trees are stressed.
Looking for the cause, Rogers scraped dirt away from the base of the trunk with a shovel. There was no rot. He dug up a small root and picked away the outer layer to find a moist, healthy core. He picked at the surrounding soil and found the problem. This tree needs more water, pronto.
Rogers decided to call the center’s manager, whom he knows, and pass on his observations. He won’t make a dime off this stop, but he doesn’t care. Rogers comps a lot of his work, particularly as he gets closer to retirement and less in need of money. Sometimes he does it for a cause or group he supports. Other times he does it because he doesn’t think a customer has much money, or because of his affection for the tree.
For example, when Rob Ryder of Ojai asked Rogers to advise him on how to trim his huge 400-year-old valley oak, it was love at first sight. The tree’s trunk measures 17 feet around, and its zigzagging limbs stretch out into the middle of the neighbors’ yards. The trunk leans slightly, allowing you to stand right at the center of its canopy.
“When you get under it you can see its magnificence,” Rogers said. “It’s just like a mind-blower tree.”
When Ryder asked him to return to speak directly to the trimmers, Rogers welcomed a chance to see the tree again and refused to bill Ryder.
Right after the gratis stop at the Ojai Valley Women’s Club, Rogers headed to the home of Jeff Skoff, who wants to add a bedroom, bath and patio to his Ojai house.
Rogers has provided consulting services to the cities of Ventura, Simi Valley, Moorpark, Oxnard and Santa Paula, but the bulk of his work is advising developers and such homeowners as Skoff, often about how to comply with local tree ordinances.
Rogers said Thousand Oaks and Agoura Hills are the most protective about their trees, insisting, among other things, that any development plan account for how every tree with a 2-inch or larger diameter will be affected.
In Ojai, developers’ plans must account for all trees larger than 8 to 12 inches in diameter, depending on the type. Rogers was there to assess six trees in Skoff’s backyard, a relatively small task. His biggest development job to date involved providing an inventory of 3,500 trees in Santa Clarita and took him nearly four months.
The large jobs often get tedious, but other times they are more exciting than he would like. Once while his wife, Kathleen, helped him inspect trees in Woodland Hills, someone mistook their binders and cans of paint used to mark trunks for automatic weapons, and they were soon surrounded by a helicopter and 10 police officers with guns drawn.
The couple have an adult son who is an architect and a daughter who is an accountant. For relaxation, Rogers enjoys tennis--he keeps his racket in the back of his station wagon next to his tools.
Even in retirement, Rogers said, he will still be looking out for his leafy friends. In anticipation, Rogers has increased his volunteer work. He serves on the Libbey Park Tree Committee formed this spring and the Heritage Tree Committee, which is working to designate the area’s most valuable trees. He is also a member of the Ojai Land Conservancy.
Although Rogers talks about retirement, he’s finding it difficult to actually stop working. He works about 30 hours a week, down from a regular 40-hour week in years past. He has tried cutting back further on his schedule, but nearly every day people call him with their tree problems, and a rush of excitement returns. Invariably, he thinks to himself, “Gosh, today I might see something I’ve never seen before,” and he agrees to take the job.
“What can be better than doing what you love?” he asked. “You don’t even consider it work.”
About This Series
“On the Job” is an occasional series about working people in Ventura County and how their lives have been shaped, challenged and enriched by what they do. This installment focuses on the work experiences of arborist Paul Rogers of Ojai.
