In 2004 my husband, Paul and I fell in love with a charming bungalow on the corner of Laurel Street and Rawls Avenue. Its predominant feature was what we thought was a Banyan tree. After we bought the house, we learned that it was Cuban laurel. After much discussion, we creatively named her “Tree”. Tree is enormous, taking up almost one third of our lot. Her canopy shelters our entire corner and her root structure extends under our house, garage, into our driveway and across Rawls. Tree is home to birds, bromeliads, orchids, and squirrels. Tree is a beautiful sculpture of multiple trunks and roots. The bumps created by Tree’s roots provide a natural traffic calming effect on Rawls Ave. The temperature is often several degrees cooler under Tree’s wide-reaching boughs, which keeps our cooling costs down in the summer. Sometimes when I relax beneath her bounty, I feel small and insignificant.
Along with all her assets, Tree has a few liabilities too. Her thirsty roots reach every inch of our yard, which makes digging challenging. Every new plant we add to our landscape must be both shade and drought tolerant, or in a pot. At least twice a year tree makes me the rakemeister. I can easily fill 14 leaf bags in a single afternoon. A couple of times a year, Tree drops thousands of sticky, purple berries. The ants love them, but we don’t. Sometimes, after several hours of pressure washing, Paul will turn to me and say, “I think we should cut down that pesky tree.”
Our arborist says that Tree may be over 100 years old. We would like her to live another 100 years. However, Tree may be in danger because of development. We live across the street from the Kanaya project. As part of the project, the City of Sarasota is requiring Kanaya to rebuild Rawls Avenue with an inverted crown. Our arborist says any digging below curb level will undermine the integrity of Tree’s roots, which could place our home and lives in danger. We have spoken with the city engineering department, and they explained that Kanaya’s plans call for “field engineering” the inverted crown. This means that Kanaya has permission to build the new road around the root structure of the tree. The city agreed to include us in any meetings with Kanaya builders relative to our tree. We are pleased with their cooperative spirit.
Along with the Laurel Park Neighborhood Association, we would like to see Rawls Avenue restored to its original brick. We have saved all of the bricks that Kanaya excavated at the city’s request in order to view Tree’s sub-street root structure. We believe Tree would enjoy the additional moisture provided by rainwater seeping between the bricks. We are grateful to the Laurel Park Neighborhood Association for championing this effort and hope Kanaya’s builders will comply with this request.
Naturally, we’ll closely monitor the progress of the project. We love Tree and want her to shade our neighborhood for many decades. I hope to report good news in future edition of the Laurel Park News.