FORESTRY ON THE COUNTRY ESTATE 



A LAKE TWO FEET DEEP IS AS BEAUTIFUL AS A LAKE TWENTY FEET DEEP. 



uplands throughout the woodlot. As a 

 rule Nature provides these, as it were, 

 breathing spaces, here and there in the 

 forest, herself, fills them with wire 

 grass and wild roses, golden rod and 

 iron weed, and gives her bushes — 

 sumacs, viburnums, thorns — a chance t > 

 spread out. Catbirds and thrashers and 

 chewinks love these places, and nest in 

 the low bushes. Flickers come here for 

 worms and weed seeds, and the whole 

 glade is surrounded by beady-eyed fly- 

 catchers on the lookout for insects. The 

 forest meadow is an amphitheater for 

 sunloving trees. Around it gather the 

 scarlet oaks, sweet gums, liriodendrons, 

 blackberries — all of them one vast color 

 scheme in the fall. Use the axe to favor 

 them, for you will find the shade-endur- 

 ing trees crowding in also ; take out the 

 red oak aufl leave the scarlet — what is 

 two dollars' worth of lumber compared 

 to fifty autumns of gorgeous scarlets! 

 Take out that scraggly elm and favor 

 the sweet gum, you need his red, yellow 

 and purple stars in the autumn, and you 

 need his button balls in the. winter to 

 the end that a colony of goldfinches may 

 be attracted thither. 



And vou are likelv to find a white 



ash growing somewhere around this 

 meadow. If not, plant one, for she is 

 the undisputed queen of the forest. No 

 tree excels it in beauty of form, foliage 

 or autumn coloration. It wants plenty 

 of sunlight and rich soil, and is a gross 

 feeder, being known to foresters as the 

 "wolf of the forest." Put in here also 

 the American linden or basswood for its 

 fragrant bee flowers, and leave a clump 

 of persimmons in directing the activities 

 of the axe, or else plant them in if you 

 have none. 



You have also to provide for winter 

 coloration. All the trees above men- 

 tioned will be bare and gray in the win- 

 ter, but you can paint in rich sap-greens 

 with bushy sunloving pitch pines, points 

 of green, blueberry — covered with red 

 cedars — and feathery dark greens with 

 your white pines. The conformation 

 of your meadow will tell you just where 

 to work in these efifects. And do not. 

 I beg of you, make a flat green lawn of 

 your meadow and plant a border of 

 rhododendrons, out in the sun where 

 Nature never intended them to grow. If 

 wild roses, golden rod, and purple iron- 

 weed, with scarlet sumac and great 

 walls of living color all about are not 



