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While construction crews work furiously to finish Apple\u2019s mammoth new headquarters in Cupertino this year, another critical piece of the campus\u2019 design is taking shape 100 miles to the east.<\/p>\nWhile construction crews work furiously to finish Apple\u2019s mammoth new headquarters in Cupertino this year, another critical piece of the campus\u2019 design is taking shape 100 miles to the east.<\/p>\n
In a cluster of East Bay nurseries, Apple has been growing more than 4,600 trees, which are nestled in large, wooden boxes. Some time later this year, Apple\u2019s team of arborists will start shipping these trees two or three at time to Cupertino, where they will be painstakingly\u00a0planted as part of the broader landscaping plan.<\/p>\n
The investment in these trees represents the kind of attention to detail, quality, and finish that is classic Apple. Rather than just planting seedlings and watching them develop slowly over 20 years, as many developers do, Apple is hoping to come as close as possible to creating the sensation of a thick, forest-like wonderland right from the start.<\/p>\n
Other companies and municipalities have routinely purchased and transplanted fully grown trees. In this case, it\u2019s the scale of Apple\u2019s landscaping plans that seem to have no precedent, arborists say.<\/p>\n
From the moment Apple proposed its audacious new campus in 2011, it has emphasized how green it would be. Where the old property, previously owned primarily by Hewlett-Packard, was mostly concrete, the new campus will be an overwhelmingly green space for the estimated 14,000 workers who will call it home.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, about 20 percent of the space is landscaping, most of it is big asphalt parking lots,\u201d cofounder Steve Jobs said when first presenting the plans to the Cupertino City Council. \u201cWe want to completely change this and make 80 percent of it landscaping. And the way we\u2019re going to do this \u2013 we\u2019re going to put most of the parking underground. And you can see what we have in mind. Today there are 3,700 trees on the property, we\u2019d like to almost double that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For Jobs, who grew up in the region, it was a chance to recapture the lost feel of an area that was once mostly open spaces and fruit orchards before it gave way to low-slung, drab office buildings.<\/p>\n
Apple has confirmed publicly that the total number of trees planted will exceed 8,000. That\u2019s a big increase over the 3,616 that were on the land before. And it\u2019s well over the 4,422-tree minimum that would have been required by Cupertino planning rules.<\/p>\n
To oversee its arboreal ambitions, Apple hired Palo Alto arborist Dave Muffly to be its tree whisperer. Muffly was already a well-known figure among Bay Area conservation groups, long before his Apple posting. Over the past several years, Muffly has been leading a team entrusted with implementing Apple\u2019s tree strategy. According to planning documents, Apple intended to remove 3,616 trees from the land before construction could begin.<\/p>\n
Muffly selected and stored 800 of the healthiest and most attractive of those trees and \u201cboxed\u201d them so they could be stored in a corner of the construction site.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI have not heard of this ever being done with thousands of trees,\u201d Focht said. \u201cI\u2019m sure Apple did all this vetting and planning in advance. But their transportation costs will be quite high.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Focht noted that this aggressive approach will offer some early dividends. For instance, the shade provided early on will help offset both heating and cooling costs for the facilities.<\/p>\n
But while Apple has been focused on making the new campus environmentally friendly, the real payoff will be creating a unique work experience in a region where the fight for talent remains enormously competitive.<\/p>\n
Source: http:\/\/venturebeat.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While construction crews work furiously to finish Apple\u2019s mammoth new headquarters in Cupertino this year, another critical piece of the campus\u2019 design is taking shape 100 miles to the east. In a cluster of East Bay nurseries, Apple has been … Continue reading