Steven Levy, Backchannel:

As the campus came into shape, Muffly — who was granted full-time status as Apple’s senior arborist in 2011 — had to actually get the trees. This task was even harder because the arborist and his small team (he calls them his “elves”) needed more trees than originally estimated. When Jobs presented his plan to the Cupertino City Council in June 2011, he said that Apple would add to the 3,700 existing trees for a total of 6,000. But when Muffly began his work, he realized that nearly all the (non-indigenous) existing trees would have to go.

“It was all junk trees and parking lots here,” he says. “So it was a long process.

There’s a lot to enjoy in this story. There’s the background on Steve Jobs and his history with trees, coupled with the process of selecting trees for Apple Park, with an emphasis on saving and planting native trees. Native trees are built to consume the rainfall for a specific area, grow well in the native soil without supplement. Steve Jobs knew this and hired an arborist who shared his vision.