Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) / A Practical Guide to the Making of Home Grounds and the Growing of Flowers, Fruits, and Vegetables for Home Use

by L. H. Bailey

Likewise, a street that is devoid of good trees cannot be the best residential section; and a park that lacks well-grown trees is either immature or barren.

Although the list of good and hardy lawn and street trees is rather extensive, the number of kinds generally planted and recognized is small. Since most home places can have but few trees, and since they require so many years to mature, it is natural that the home-maker should hesitate about experimenting, or trying kinds that he does not himself know. So the home-maker in the North plants maples, elms, and a white birch, and in the South a magnolia and China-berry. Yet there are numbers of trees as useful as these, the planting of which might give our premises and streets a much richer expression.

It is much to be desired that some of the trees with “strong” and rugged characters be introduced into the larger grounds; such, for example, as the hickories and oaks. These may often transplant with difficulty, but the effort to secure them is worth the expenditure. Good trees of oaks, and others supposed to be difficult to transplant, may now be had of the leading nurserymen. The pin oak (Quercus palustris) is one of the best street trees and is now largely planted.

It is at least possible to introduce a variety of trees into a city or village, by devoting one street or a series of blocks to a single kind of tree,—one street being known by its lindens, one by its plane-trees, one by its oaks, one by its hickories, one by its native birches, beech, coffee-tree, sassafras, gum or liquidambar, tulip tree, and the like. There is every reason why a city, particularly a small city or a village, should become to some extent an artistic expression of its natural region.

The home-maker is fortunate if his area already possesses well-grown large trees. It may even be desirable to place the residence with reference to such trees (Plate VI); and the planning of the grounds should accept them as fixed points to which to work. The operator will take every care to preserve and safeguard sufficient of the standing trees to give the place singularity and character.

The care of the tree should include not only the protecting of it from enemies and accidents, but also the maintaining of its characteristic features. For example, the natural rough bark should be maintained against the raids of tree-scrapers; and the grading should not be allowed to disguise the natural bulge of the tree at the base, for a tree that is covered a foot or two above the natural line is not only in danger of being killed, but it looks like a post.

The best shade trees are usually those that are native to the particular region, since they are hardy and adapted to the soil and other conditions. Elms, maples, basswoods, and the like are nearly always reliable. In regions in which there are serious insect enemies or fungous diseases, the trees that are most likely to be attacked may be omitted. For instance, in parts of the East the chestnut bark-disease is a very great menace; and it is a good plan in such places to plant other trees than chestnuts.

A good shade tree is one that has a heavy foliage and dense head, and that is not commonly attacked by repelling insects and diseases. Trees for shade should ordinarily be given sufficient room that they may develop into full size and symmetrical heads. Trees may be planted as close as 10 or 15 feet apart for temporary effect; but as soon as they begin to crowd they should be thinned, so that they develop their full characteristics as trees.

Trees may be planted in fall or spring. Fall is desirable, except for the extreme North, if the land is well drained and prepared and if the trees may be got in early; but under usual conditions, spring planting is safer, if the stock has been wintered well (see discussion under Shrubs, p. 290). Planting and pruning are discussed on pp. 124 and 139.

If one desires trees with conspicuous bloom, they should be found among the magnolias, tulip trees, kœlreuteria, catalpas, chestnuts, horse-chestnut and buckeyes, cladrastis, black or yellow locust, wild black cherry, and less conspicuously in the lindens; and also in such half-trees or big shrubs as cercis, cytisus, flowering dogwood, double-flowered and other forms of apples, crab-apples, cherries, plums, peaches, hawthorn or cratægus, amelanchier, mountain ash.