Plant Health Care — What it Means to You

The idea has been captured in the phrase Plant Health Care, and it is of major importance to homeowners, businesses, arborists, tree boards, and anyone else who cares about trees and our environment.

Perhaps the story begins in 1962 with Rachel Carson and the publication of Silent Spring. Carson, a scientist as well as a gifted writer, warned the world about the effects of unbridled dumping of pesticides on fields, woodlands, and wetlands. She talked about the uptake and concentration of toxic chemicals in the food chain. She pointed out the hopelessness of controlling pests with poisons because resistant strains would surely develop through the genetics of surviving insects and diseases. 

One response to Silent Spring was legislation such as the banning of DDT. Another was an agricultural practice called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). For several decades, IPM has been used by many farmers to reduce chemical applications on cropland. The key to IPM was (and still is) monitoring pest populations, looking for alternatives to traditional chemical treatments, and applying chemical controls only when a specified threshold of economic loss was exceeded. 

The concept was eventually incorporated into landscape maintenance, but thresholds of economic loss were not easily established. There was also confusion over the name. Should it be pest management or plant management? Finally, arborists had difficulty explaining to homeowners how they could benefit from it. 

Enter the idea for PHC early in the 1990s. Championed by the International Society of Arboriculture Research Trust, the National Arborist Association, and the U.S. Forest Service, PHC incorporates some of the practices and tenets of IPM, but goes far beyond.

The goal of Plant Health Care (PHC) is beautiful and healthy landscapes using the least toxic methods of pest control.