Davey Tree’s new campus home to a variety of research opportunities 

Editor’s note: On July 23, Davey Tree opened its new campus for a media tour that allowed attendees to explore the research and training center, as well as the facilities located on its 200-acre property. This is part one of a two-part series exploring the space.

The Davey Tree Expert Company has been setting the industry standard for tree care ever since John Davey founded the company in Kent in 1880. 

Davey was born in 1846 in Somersetshire, England, where he planted his first potato crop on a farm his father managed. His father taught him to “do it right, or not at all,” a virtue that the company has used as its motto ever since its founding. 

Now, 145 years later, Davey Tree continues to honor that virtue with the addition of its impressive 200-acre, solar-powered SEED (Science, Employee Education and Development) Campus at 6700 OH-43 in Kent, right across the street from Davey Tree’s headquarters.

Because of its extensive growth throughout the years, Davey Tree saw a need for a dedicated research and training facility, so it purchased Oak Knolls Golf Course in 2017. Shortly thereafter, training and research commenced on the grounds and the planning for the SEED Campus began. The company broke ground on the main research and training facility building on Nov. 30, 2022, and finished this summer, although it is still working on the finishing touches. The official employee grand opening was on Aug 15. 

The research carried out at the facility’s state-of-the-art laboratories, greenhouses and research plots will focus on plant care, soil science, vegetation management, water management, invasive species, disease prevention, soil science, climate change and more.

The SEED campus, which includes an extensive expansion of The Davey Institute of Tree Sciences, continues the research that Davey envisioned when he founded the institute in 1908. The institute, a pioneer in the science of arboriculture, offers a month-long training course for Davey arborists that will now be held largely at the new campus.

The campus includes a 70,000-square-foot training and research center with two laboratories, classrooms, offices, a state-of-the-art two-story climbing structure, several breakout spaces for meetings and a repurposed barn for company functions.

The grounds also features a 50-foot-high tree canopy walkway for training and research purposes, a non-energized, right-of-way utility line training area, a greenhouse facility, an arboretum, nurseries, several gardens, research plots, a photovoltaic array, a small golf course, a walkway that traverses the pre-existing class-3 bog, an irrigation pond and an amphitheater.

The planning and design of the SEED Campus and its structures was a joint effort between Davey Tree and architectural, engineering and planning firm SmithGroup. 

One of Davey Tree’s first plans of action after purchasing the golf course was to disassemble a large historic barn that had been on the property for decades and store the wood beams for future use. 

Before the golf course was established, the property had been a dairy farm, a detail that designers used as inspiration to create the 70,000-square-foot research and training center. They even attached the barn to the west end of the center.  

“The inspiration came from agriculture,” SmithGroup Senior Principal Landscape Architect Chad Brintnall said. “When you look at those buildings, they have an archetype which, you can clearly see, is expressed in a kind of pole barn aesthetic, kind of a contemporized pole barn; the notion of when a farmer got 20 more cows, they added another shed building. They kind of had a little bit of a rambling nature.”

But despite that “rambling nature,” the SEED Campus main training and research building has a deliberate design based on the functional requirements of the center.

“There’s a very intentional organization to that building based on the (architectural) program,” Brintnall said. “The connectors that run as a spine through that building allow us to connect intelligently through the building, giving great circulation for the different floors, but also allows Davey to tour people through that facility – they entertain a lot of clients and other folks – without disturbing the core functions of those programs, be it a classroom, or a lab or the climbing center.” 

The building includes high R-value Structural Insulated Panels on most walls and ceilings and is equipped with several skylights that help reduce the use of electrical lighting.

The entire campus has a focus on being environmentally friendly. It’s all powered by a net-zero, 2-acre photovoltaic array designed to offset the facility’s total energy consumption on an annual basis. 

Numerous architectural details and furnishings of the training center are inspired by trees, plants and nature. Doors are stained with natural colors, the stairs leading from the lobby to the second floor are crafted from wood harvested from the property, some of the conference room tables are cherry wood that was harvested on site, and there’s repurposed wood throughout the facility. In some areas where interior tile and exterior pavers were installed, a color scheme and patterning was chosen that imitates that of plant fiber. 

The company plans to apply for LEED (Leadership In Energy and Environmental Design)  certification in the future, as well as Sustainable SITES certification for the campus’ landscape.

The greenhouse

The SEED Campus greenhouse facility is located on the eastern quadrant of the compound. It features four 600-square-foot greenhouses connected to a main house that serves as a space for storage and preparation. Each of the four greenhouses can be accessed from the main house through individual electronically controlled automatic sliding doors. All four have evaporative cooling, and two of them have heaters to allow for growing throughout the colder months.

“We’re going to be able to have some live plant specimens for our classes that we’ll do all year around, but especially in winter. Our big one is Davey Institute of Tree Sciences, which is in February. It’s a month long,” Davey Institute Research Coordinator Ashley Kloes said. “We’ll have different species of turf, different species of pollinating plants. We can have some live insects; greenhouses get pests, so we’ll be able to bring those into the classrooms so students can actually see them, instead of just looking at them in a picture or video. It’s going to be an amazing spot for research, as well as education.” 

The laboratories

Two laboratories are located at the research center: a diagnostics lab that identifies and treats complications relating to trees, plants, water, soil samples and other tree care problems, and a new research lab. In the past, Davey Tree’s research has largely been restricted to field research, but with its new dedicated research lab, along with the year-round greenhouse, the research season can be extended. 

Tree nursery

Davey Tree arborists have been planting trees in the SEED Campus nursery since 2021. The trees were planted directly into native soil, each with enough space to allow for long-term growth. Nursery arborists are currently conducting disease control, insect control and fertilization studies on the grounds, to name a few.

“We have 11 different species of trees, so 558 trees across 11 species, ranging from crabapples to oaks, pines, maples, elms, cherry, spruce trees. These 11 species were selected to represent different growth characteristics, different physiologies,” Davey Institute’s Vice President and General Manager Dan Herms said. “We have evergreen trees, deciduous trees, drought-tolerant trees, drought-sensitive trees, trees that grow continuously through the growing season and trees that just have one growth spurt in the spring. The studies that we conduct are mostly what we call plant health care, so insect and disease problems, plant nutrition, fertilization, those types of things. We create randomized replicated trials across the different species.”

Each tree base is outfitted with a drip irrigation ring that is controlled by moisture sensors buried in each plot. The sensors observe the moisture level of the soil, triggering the programmable irrigation system to turn on and off when a set moisture level is reached.

The 3-hole golf course 

Adjacent to the greenhouse facility is a 3-hole golf course that is used for research, training and recreation. The putting greens are disease resistant 007xl grass, and the tees and fairways are Dominant X-Treme 7 Creeping Bentgrass, a durable grass blend that is known for its fast germination, heat tolerance and reduced fungicide management.

“We built the golf course with the idea of sustainability in mind. We purposely built it to use less water, less fertilizer and overall less plant health care products,” Davey Institute’s Manager of Research Operations Zane Raudenbush said. “We used newer grasses that are more resistant to disease. We used soils that hold more water and nutrients compared to the typical soils you would see used on golf courses. We think that’s going to give us a showcase piece to demonstrate that you can still have these nice playing surfaces and use a lot less resources. And selfishly, we see it as a place where employees can come out and play golf, and I’m very interested in teaching people how to play the game of golf.”

The solar array

Near the golf course is the SEED Campus’ 2-acre, 760-kilowatt solar array. Electricity is the only means of power on the campus, aside from gas-operated lawn and tree care tools, and many of those tools have been replaced with their battery-powered counterparts. As part of the company’s efforts to make the campus as sustainable as possible, the facility has low-flow plumbing, LED lighting and auto-dim occupancy lighting. There’s also an EV charging station for employees and guests. 

Two separate research projects have been created to study how solar array spaces can be transformed into sustainable growing areas. The Davey Institute in partnership with Ohio State University is using the space to study agrovoltaics, a science that helps researchers learn how to grow food and forage crops in the presence of solar arrays. The researchers are focusing on how to grow different grasses, alfalfa and clover to understand how they perform in a low-light, high-heat environment – it gets hot under those solar panels. In another project, Davey Tree is researching how to make the spaces low-maintenance by growing specific grasses, controlling weeds and keeping everything at a compliant height. 

Research plots

One of the studies being done at the SEED Campus required that the heavy machinery used to construct the many installations at the facility, such as bulldozers, dump trucks and rollers, also be used to create compacted soil research plots to simulate the type of soil conditions that grounds keepers and planters might encounter in urban environments. The study will help researchers learn how to mitigate the effects of compaction and increase the quality of the soil.

There are eight, 10,000-square-foot research plots, four with undisturbed soil and four with compacted soil. Each plot is divided into nine subplots, each with its own soil mixture. Six species of trees will be planted into each of the subplots. 

“They will be small bare-root trees, and that’s part of the design element, too, not balled and burlaped, not containerized trees, so we’re not introducing a different kind of soil into the plot,” Herms said. “And as those trees grow, we’ll thin them out; we can harvest the trees. As we thin them, we can quantify the root system, the root-to-shoot ratio, which is a key physiological trait that responds to soil quality and soil fertility. So, that will be a unique study. Nothing quite like that has been done at that scale, so that’s pretty exciting.”

The soil mixture that produces the most desirable root-to shoot-ratio will be the preferable soil to 

use where compacted soil is present. 

The company’s legacy

Throughout Davey Tree’s remarkable history, the company has acquired some historical artifacts that have been in storage. Now they’re on display in a climate-controlled archival space at the training center. The artifacts include letters, uniforms, tools, books and original art work that Frank Swift Chase painted for Davey Tree to use in its advertisements. 

John Davey was known as the father of tree surgery, because he believed that trees are like humans in that they can be healed through scientific means. Now, all these years later, his company is at the forefront of tree care sciences, as can be seen with its phosphonate fertilizer control strategy that is successfully suppressing the nematode population killing beech trees in the U.S. Or in the company’s efforts to maintain native biodiversity and increase the milkweed populations in utility right-of-way easements, where utility companies destroy milkweed habitats during pole installation and maintenance; monarch butterfly larvae will only eat milkweed leaves. The SEED Campus is not just a facility aimed at advancing research and personnel training for residential lawns, golf courses and overall tree care; it’s a company with local, national and global biodiversity in mind.

When Davey started his company, his first job was at Standing Rock Cemetery, right next to the SEED Campus. And that’s where he was laid to rest.  

“I think he would be honored that we are continuing the legacy of plant-based tree care that he established, and that the SEED Campus will be hosting the first Davey Institute of Tree Sciences in January, that he established. I think he would be very pleased to see what the company has grown into and that we continue to honor his legacy of research-based, science-based expert tree care. I think he would be really pleased to see that it’s located right next to Standing Rock Cemetery where he got his start in tree care in the United States,” Herms said. “We haven’t left the neighborhood.”