252 STATE HOETIOULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Ornamental Tree-growing and Planting. 



By Chaklks I. Kobards, Butler. 

 Prepared for the meeting of the Stale Horticultural Society. 



He who gave us the land and the showers to water it, and the 

 strength of arm and muscle to work, has instructed us to plant. 



He who plants a tree does not plant for his own gratification or 

 benefit alone. Our works shall not only follow us, but our deeds of 

 the present will cultivate such tastes and dispositions in our children 

 as will create a love for usefulness and beauty. An objection to the 

 disposition of the American tree-planter and grower of the present 

 day is an inclination to too great an effort to combine usefulness with 

 beauty — in other words, to place usefulness first, beauty second, in 

 tree-planting. I am often asked if we cannot use a fruit tree as an or- 

 namental tree for shade and ornament. While we may do this and 

 accomplish to some extent a two-fold purpose, it is not the best thing 

 to do. 



An apple-tree may be ornamental with its beautiful blossoms of 

 spring and its glorious highly-colored fruits of autumn, but its days of 

 beauty are comparatively short, and its dying branches and decaying 

 fruits of twenty years are not desirable. 



The oak, the elm, the ash, the maple and trees of a long-lived class 

 for street and large lawns; hardy evergreens and hardy low-growing 

 trees for smaller enclosure^. 



Adapt your planting to your surroundings — always bearing in mind 

 the future dimensions of the trees you plant. Overcrowding mars the 

 effect of beauty in lawn decoration. Tree-planting is in its infancy in 

 the West. Not only are we opening for improvement great fields of 

 western territory, but by the introduction of eastern home-seekers, our 

 large farms are being rapidly subdivided into smaller homes. These 

 smaller homes will bring in their owners better cultivated tastes for 

 home adornment, more earnest and persevering determination to make 

 home attractive, and better opportunity by their less extended opera- 

 tions to bestow proper care on what they plant. 



It is not all of planting to plant. The care of an ornamental tree 

 begins with its growth. Like the care of a beloved child, its wayward 

 tendencies must be checked in infancy to perfect beauty and symmetry 

 in old age. I have on my grounds an oak that grew from an acorn, ten 

 years ago brought from the woods in a load of leaf-mold. Every year 



