Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens strives to bring the beauty of plants from around the world to Pittsburgh while inspiring people to take actions toward sustainability and environmental stewardship. Integrated pest management is designed to...

Learning to distinguish the symptoms of lightning strikes is a valuable tool for arborists, landscapers, pest control companies, and gardeners. The symptoms may be confused with other causes such as lethal yellowing disease (Candidatus palmae...

Thousands of trees are struck by lightning every year. These trees will have varying degrees of damage ranging from complete shattering and destruction of the tree, to a slow lingering death, to virtually no apparent damage at all (Figure 1). When...

Join Jenica Allen and Bethany Bradley to learn about new tools for identifying and prioritizing range-shifting invasive plants coming soon to a landscape near you. Whether you’re a property owner, land manager, landscape professional, or policymaker,...

Conifers are commonly planted in North America to provide year-round screening, as windbreaks or as focal trees in the landscape. However, conifers including certain species of spruce, pine, hemlock, cedar and fir planted in northern areas of North...

Tree defects such as co-dominant leaders, girding roots and buried trunk flares, present at time of planting, cause failures and decline long after the warrantee period has expired.  Landscape architects may go to nurseries to tag trees; but often...

Ice or snow loads can cause branch breakage or failure of entire trees and shrubs. Branches or entire trees that fall in storms can impact homes, vehicles, power lines and block roads. After a storm, the first priorities are safety and restoration of...

Intensively managed landscapes, like those found in many public gardens, attempt to mitigate the impact of significant weather events through irrigation, improving soil characteristics, and mulching. At the same time many gardens purposefully push the...

As the pace of urban development increases, urban green spaces, and urban trees in particular, come in direct conflict with bulldozers and backhoes. With careful early planning and an understanding of how tree damage occurs, strategies for tree...

Botrytis is widely considered to be one of the costliest diseases in greenhouse ornamental production—and deservedly so, since it’s also known as a high-risk pathogen for its potential to develop fungicide resistance. It’s a challenge many growers...