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By Dan Muckelbauer Waukesha Home Editor Age. Disease. Insects. Drought. Water- logged roots. Leaf-clogged gutters or wrecked roofing or siding, or other signs a tree is too close. Or a half-dozen other reasons. You have the wrong tree in the right spot or vice versa. If the damage to tree or property is bad enough, the time may have come to replace it. "It's all about finding the right tree for the right place," Bill Reichenbach of Wachtel Tree Service, of Merton, said. "Putting the right tree in the right spot is not as easy as it sounds." Research is key. "They should do a lot of research on their own or get professional help," such as from an arborist, he said of homeown- ers. "You need to know a plant's mature size," said Reichenbach, an arborist cer- tified by the International Society of Aboriculture. "You need to give them the space from buildings, and utility lines and sewer and water lines, and side- walks." He gave some words of caution on size. "Tree size can be misinterpreted by the nurseries," Reichenbach said. "There's a lot of marketing of plants, and a lot of it is appropriate, but a lot of it is inappro- priate." Sometimes prejudices of property owners prevent the right tree from find- ing the right spot. These preferences can find themselves being repeated by land- scape designers and grown by nurseries who are giving people what they want. "That sometimes gets them in trouble and they say, 'I want to put this tree in the right spot,'" Reichenbach said of property owners. What do people want? "They want a red color in the fall," Reichenbach said, for starters. C O N T E N T S Know which method to use when preserving your harvest Solar cookers for energy savings, a cooler kitchen One arborist's choices for five great trees A publication of the Waukesha Freeman and Oconomowoc Enterprise • SEPTEMBER 2017 As fall approaches, thoughts turn to trees Photo courtesy of Bill Reichenbach See TREES/Page 6 253527008 Arborists offer advice for choosing a tree and the right site This photo shows proper spacing for these conifers. Know the full maturity size of trees when planting. It can save cutting down a mature tree, which can be costly.

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