It doesn't just happen in the forest

I'd heard about it and seen its effects on western road trips, but I assumed it was a problem that was found on Weyerhaeuser land, or at Georgia Pacific, or another one of the big Northwest lumber companies. It never occurred to me that the pines in my my own modest residential garden might fall victim to the destructive mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. But it seems this beetle is just as happy in an urban setting as it is out in our national forests.

On a tour of our garden this past summer, a visitor pointed out to me the hardened deposits of sap that had oozed from the trunks of our Shore pines, Pinus contorta, (also known as Lodgepole pine.) He explained that this was the sign of a pine beetle infestation.

The Mulch Man had been concerned for some time that despite supplemental summer water and careful pruning, the sap flow and excessive yellowing of the needles indicated the three pines weren't in optimum health. He was particularly concerned about the tree that sat on the east side of the Northwest Territory and had always been less robust than its brethren in the north bed.

It doesn't look too bad in the image above, but when you look closer, you can see quite a bit of yellowing in the needles throughout the tree.

The mountain pine beetle attacks Ponderosa pines and Lodgepole pines. There isn't a lot you can do to fight these beetles once they are established. It may take a while to happen, but eventually the tree will die. Since our pine had declined markedly since summer, we reluctantly decided it needed to come out.

After years of carefully nurturing our green privacy screen to the east, we now can't avoid our neighbor's back door and kitchen window. .

So what to put there for fastest coverage? It came to me: move the established Rhododendron 'Anah Krushke' out from under the cedar and locate her five feet to the north. So today I spent a few hours wrestling the poor thing out and back into her new home.

That left a space too, but it's a different space. The expectation is the cedar will expand northward while the rhody expands southward (and upward.) We can add some ferns now, and in a few years the space should be more private again.

Meanwhile, we are monitoring the two north pines very carefully. Although they show definite signs of the mountain pine beetle infestation, the trees aren't looking too bad yet. That could change quickly, like the first tree, or we could get lucky and have a few years for succession planning.

But it's sad to contemplate that future: we'll lose two more trees we really like - and quite a bit of privacy - all at the same time. With good planning I hope we can replace those pines with a minimal amount of exposure. Since this is the Northwest Territory and his garden domain, you can be sure the Mulch Man will be on it.