Robert Whitman’s Tree List: “I Naturally Think Of Cities and Trees As One”
Multistudio designs evoke the richness of their contexts, including the environmental, cultural, and historical. Our deep commitment to inquiry and research allows us to deliver projects with a layered and authentic sense of place.
This approach is embodied in the work of Multistudio’s landscape architect and city planner Robert Whitman. Whitman’s labor of love, “The Tree List,” is a publicly available study of native trees that are ideal for landscape architecture. Meticulously assembled, Whitman’s list has become an official resource for municipalities and has proven essential for Multistudio’s landscape architecture and city design projects.
“The Tree List” is also emblematic of Whitman’s ethos as a practitioner. What follows is a conversation that tells the story of the list and how this study is reflected in Whitman’s work.
Robert Whitman: When I was first out of college, I came across tree lists whose purpose was to catalog trees that were best suited for a certain region or design — and I simply didn’t agree with them. I would talk with senior tree experts about which trees were right or wrong for particular contexts, and it never seemed to match these lists.
I began to realize that these lists weren’t put together in any sort of nuanced way. It was more like this: “Well, we got a few people in the room, we threw some plants out there, and we called it good.”
But I wondered, who was in the room? What was the point of this list? And so I started talking to colleagues in my field, trying to figure out what would be a good method of putting together a better tree list.
Robert Whitman: I had already created a database of just about every plant and tree that we can grow here in Kansas City. I thought if I tried to be scientific about it and find out what the experts think, I could see if my list matches these others.
So I shared my database with a number of colleagues — educators, arboriculturists, tree farmers, people in tree sales, and design experts — knowing that not every expert was going to know every tree, and I had them rate different trees for specific characteristics.
I’ve come to understand that [plants] are really a community. And we're part of that community, as well.
Robert Whitman: On landscape value, general value, cultural adaptability, and usefulness as a street tree or urban tree. The group rated them 0 to 5. My goal was to look at everyone’s data for each tree, assemble them, combine them, and come up with averages.
Although it’s not scientific — the list is just people’s opinions — at least the data is scientific in the way it’s assembled mathematically, so that every person’s rating is equally weighted. From that information, I felt we got the most accurate list of trees that are suitable for our region.
Robert Whitman: Well, I kept leaning into one tree, the red maple, which is overused. But it showed up on all those lists. Yet, when I talked to every expert that I knew, none of them would say the red maple was a good tree for our region. I couldn't make sense of it. I kept thinking about the red maple: Why don’t these experts say the red maple is a good tree, but every list says we should use them? My list ultimately showed what I thought it would: that the red maple is average at best.
Robert Whitman: It's really about tree sales, right? You have so many business people making decisions on what is most profitable, what grows the best, is easy to install — the tree survives for a year, and then they're done with their warranty on it. It was all about which trees are most profitable for them. I suppose the rationale was to contribute to those lists, so they could promote a profitable product.
Robert Whitman: One person that comes to mind is Alan Branhagen. He was the Director of Horticulture at Powell Gardens at the time. I felt that he, and others like him, understood the nuances of plant material and that he had a deep understanding and a passion for it.
Even the way he responded in the spreadsheet was different from others. Take sycamores and plane trees for example; they’re similar trees. But a sycamore is native, and a plane tree is not. Yet almost everyone in the study said plane trees are better trees, and that's generally accepted. And I would have thought the same thing. It’s just a nicer landscape tree.
Branhagen flipped that ranking. Overall, the sycamore was ranked a bit lower than the plane tree, yet he preferred the native tree. Most people weren’t thinking about native or non-native trees. They were just thinking about landscape quality. Branhagen was thinking of the nuance of cross-breeding, of non-native genetics that are now being dispersed into our landscapes. This impacts the whole food web and ecological balance. His expertise was critical.
Each plant has a certain place. The more I capture that knowledge for my designs, the better service I can provide for our clients.
Robert Whitman: I’m always trying to determine the best options for a project. A landscape design is only successful long-term if it meets the criteria provided by the project. So my goal is to understand what are the best options to use locally and understand the nuances of each tree. Each plant has a certain place. The more I capture that knowledge for my designs, the better service I can provide for our clients.
Robert Whitman: There's a current project that's not yet built, but designed, that includes perennials and native grasses that I've been using for 30 years now. But the more I've tried to understand all these different plant types and how they feed, I’ve come to understand that they're really a community. And we're part of that community, as well.
I ask myself, “How do plants as a community evolve together and try to engage one another? How does this design engage the greater ecosystem and its different phases and creatures within it?”
That’s my drive to learn and understand those plants. I call the design for this current project a prairie mosaic, as it’s not a true prairie. But what I’ve designed is a garden for people, while still being an ecological system for the natural environment.
Another project that comes to mind is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Nelson-Atkins is considered the front lawn of Kansas City. My sense on this project was that if we didn’t understand our plant material, we were bound to fail, especially when it came to trees as a long-term investment.
We’re not talking decorations that are going to be here and gone in five years. Some trees only reach their prime after five, 10, or 20 years. If we don't understand the plant material for that site in relation to our local natural systems, then that landscape will not reach its optimal beauty and design intent.
Robert Whitman: The landscape at the Nelson-Atkins was originally designed by Dan Kiley, who was an internationally known landscape architect from the postwar period. One of our tasks at Multistudio was to renovate that entire landscape to preserve Kiley’s work and what worked well in that nationally and internationally important space.
We also used our knowledge of how different plant types and other materials, like stone, performed in this landscape to improve upon it for a lasting and, hopefully, permanent nature.
Robert Whitman: We’re super proud of that project. The Overland Park Urban Forest Plan is a comprehensive document that provides vision and direction to the City of Overland Park for how to manage their urban forest.
An urban forest is all private and public trees throughout the city, whether they’re streamway trees, yard trees, or street trees. Our plan explains why these trees are important — what they do for us, how the city can mention them in plans or manage them, and how we can think about trees more significantly. This information helps point to future funding and resources to improve the urban forest.
Robert Whitman: Yes, green infrastructure is an essential part of a city’s infrastructure. But so many people have blinders on. They’re so focused on their little part of the city. A street engineer may be focused on traffic, or a stormwater engineer may be focused on flooding. Yet they miss the bigger picture of how trees help with traffic issues, like speed. Trees help with stormwater issues. Trees become an important piece of infrastructure that’s not just decoration. We emphasize these concepts in urban forest plans for communities.
How can we start to think about tree preservation through the lens of cultural significance?
Robert Whitman: I naturally think about trees and cities as one. But during the creation of the Overland Park Urban Forest Plan, we did a public survey. One of my questions seemed like a throwaway: “What is your favorite tree? Tell me a tree story about a tree you love in the city.”
I was shocked at how many people responded to that question. Some of them were very specific: “That tree at this corner, or in this park, is awesome,” or “We planted a tree as a family 20 years ago, and now it's this important tree for us.”
Through this survey, we identified 50 trees that are clearly mappable. Some of these trees were mentioned a dozen times. It begs the question: how can we start to think about tree preservation through the lens of cultural significance? We don’t just think that’s a pretty tree or that’s a big tree. Trees are culturally important to us as a community.
Robert Whitman: There’s an author, Peter Kageyama, who talks about the lovableness of a city and how you can think about urban design and making from that perspective. A designer can put love notes in the landscape that people become attached to. Buildings, places, and trees all become love notes that make you love your community more and give you a connection to a place.
I believe that when we don’t have a connection to a place, we don’t feel an inherent desire to engage with that place. So we don't volunteer. We don't go to events. We aren't as social with our neighbors and other people in our community.
Peter Kageyama says we’re all consumers of our place. A few of us are also the content creators that others consume. That art festival, somebody's got to create that. It takes someone with a heart and a love for community to make something like that happen. So they're creating content. But why? They have to love their place. And if you're in a place that doesn't have these culturally significant places or things, then you're just going to have fewer people committed to creativity.
Robert Whitman: Absolutely. Through our city planning group, we're doing ordinance updates and new ordinances, and I'm involved with how we can edit these in a way that is useful, bringing my understanding of what makes them user-friendly.
When it comes to designing a community’s ordinance, I can ask questions like these: What is the goal or mission statement of this ordinance? What are we trying to screen, protect, or enhance? How can that ordinance better achieve its goals without burdening the applicant with too much landscape that costs too much to make the project unfeasible?
Yet “The Tree List” is really my passion project in regard to impact. I hope people will appreciate, value, and use it. Today, there are several cities that use it as their official list. I was on a pre-bid call yesterday about a project, and we were going through pricing details and construction needs, and the contractor said, “Oh, by the way, since Robert Whitman’s on the call …” and he held up a copy of my list.
Download “The Tree List: A Comprehensive Tree List For the Kansas City Region,” along with his additional lists of street trees, landscape trees, and evergreens.
