Sawdust flies as Albert Tamm takes his chainsaw to a birch bough six metres above Borden Park.
The arborist is up in a bucket removing deadwood, trying to stay a step ahead of winter.
“It was a surprise for me in the fall having snow around,” Tamm said, “but we dress warm and we keeping going.”
“I’m a tree guy, I like trees,” he said. “We’re trying to preserve trees, to expand their lives and keep the city green.”
The recent snowfall is not making life easy for arborists, said operations supervisor Melissa Campbell.
“Typically October is a perfect month to prune because the leaves have fallen and the arborist can see the structure of the tree, if there’s any broken branches it’s very easy to see.”
Parks are normally dry, making it them accessible to bucket trucks and other gear. This year the process is more complicated, Campbell said.
Melissa Campbell checks on the progress of pruning crews working in Borden Park. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC )
Campbell believes it’s a good time for homeowners to have their trees inspected by a professional who can assess things like disease, suckers, bud size and broken branches.
For a leafy city like Edmonton, it’s a much bigger operation.
“We have more than 370,000 trees in the inventory and we’re adding like,10,000 trees per year between developer planting and our internal operation crew planting, so the numbers are getting bigger and as the trees grow they tend to be more work,” Campbell said.
With so many trees, the city can’t inspect each every year.
The city runs a seven-year pruning cycle for ash trees and a four-year cycle for elms.
“Our crews are amazing. They step up at every opportunity. So when we do have storms they’re there, working overtime to get the work that needs to be done, done.”
You can see more from City of Edmonton parks this week on Our Edmonton, Saturday at 10 a.m., Sunday at noon and Monday at 11 a.m. on CBC TV.