Local Firm Cultivates and Transplants 500 Trees For Site
NEW YORK – When the World Trade Center Memorial Plaza is completed, visitors will be shaded by trees that were specially cultivated for the site and planted there by Houston-based Environmental Design. The 500 trees - the first of which were planted recently at a ceremony with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg - will be planted under the supervision of Environmental Design’s Tom Cox, with the final trees scheduled to be planted on 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. In addition, Mr. Cox and his business partners, Paul Cox and Mark Merit, will be joining members of victims’ families this September 11th at the annual reading of the names of those that died in the attacks.
“This is the culmination of a life’s work for me. No job has had more emotional value than this,” said Tom Cox. “ These trees are probably the most carefully cultivated trees in history.”
Beginning in 2006 when Environmental Design was hired by the Port Authority of New Jersey and New York and the World Trade Center Foundation, Cox and his team began gathering trees from New York, Pennsylvania and the Washington, DC area and transplanting them to a nursery they set up in New Jersey, just miles from Ground Zero. The trees’ original homes represent the areas hit by the 2001 terrorist attacks and they were cultivated until they reached a height of 30 feet in a climate close to their eventual home.
“A lot of work went into the selection of the trees for the memorial, and we were chosen because of our experience in projects such as this one,” added Cox.
Environmental Design is no stranger to high-profile projects and has moved thousands of trees in the Houston area and nationwide. The company moves trees with a variety of hydraulic tree spades, designed and patented by Cox. Past clients have included Lance Armstrong, Kevin Costner, Francis Ford Coppola and Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn, among others. The company’s Texas projects include The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, the TPC Four Seasons Dallas at Las Colinas, and ExxonMobil’s Upstream University in Houston, where it successfully transplanted a 75-year-old Live Oak tree.
About Environmental Design
Environmental Design was founded in 1977 by Tom Cox and has become the premier large tree transplanting company in the world. The company has led the drive to apply technology to tree transplanting and has worked on many high-profile jobs in Texas and around the world. Environmental Design has led the drive to apply technology to tree transplanting through a stunning list of achievements, including: designing and patenting the world's largest on-site hydraulic tree spade and the world's largest highway legal tree spade; developing and perfecting the roundball tree transplanting technique and the Gantry Lift System for giant tree transplanting; and transplanting the largest tree ever moved. For more information, please call (800) 376-4260 or visit www.treemover.com.
