218 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



beauty of the country fifty years ahead, and so leave here and there, in 

 out-of-the-way places, more trees that nature had planted and rooted. 

 It could have been done in so many places, with no material disadvantage 

 to the cultivation of the soil. 



Shade trees about the home speak of refined tastes within. As you 

 ride through a country naked and barren of trees about the buildings 

 and other favorable places, you are at once impressed with the thought 

 that the people are behind the times and lacking in progressive spirit. 

 In such localities we naturally look for poor schoolhouses. True, that 

 natural conditions have much to do with this. A low, flat country that 

 needs all of the warmth of the sun, and thorough drainage, to make 

 it productive, is at a disadvantage; but even there a man can 

 with his own labor so build and elevate by grading that his lawn 

 and farm yards can be beautified with trees, and thus add com- 

 forts and value to the home. Shade trees in the fields should be 

 placed around watering-places, along lanes and short bluffy places 

 that can not be cultivated. It is also useful and ornamental to 

 set trees in a thicket, and of such kinds as will make dense shade 

 from the ground up, and so located on the north and west sides of barn- 

 yards that they may serve as a shield against the cold of winter. Great 

 improvement has been made in the general appearance about barns, the 

 last few years, and chief among them was moving the straw stacks 

 and stock from the front to the rear of the barn, so that the front yards 

 may grass over. Now, by setting out two or three trees in suitable 

 places in such a yard, still further attractions will be added to the place. 



Those who have shade trees in lawns must make the best of them 

 where they are, and so surround and fill in the margins as to give 

 artistic eiJect. In preparing for new lawns with trees, take plenty of 

 room. The ground is not wasted, and a large farm lawn can be more 

 easily cared for thau a small one. Properly grade the ground before 

 setting out the trees. Like a picture, a lawn must have a background. 

 Of all the attractive places one sees in riding through the country, none 

 is more pleasing than the home built on the side of a hill, and the rise 

 of ground back of the house covered with orchard or woods trees. It 

 does not give a good effect to have the row of trees by the roadside in 

 front of the house, so that the passer by looks under and through them 

 out into nothing beyond. The rows of trees should be back of the 

 house and set quite close together, for a background to the scene; and 

 then in front set a very few in irregular order, so that the term "careless 

 adaptability" will apply. 



As to the kinds of trees each one must set, use judgment in accord- 

 ance with location, soil, etc. Trees must be healthy to look well. Com- 

 mon forest trees that are natural to the place will always thrive best. 

 In a fair-size lawn, two or three evergreen trees set a little at one side 

 and back will give a pleasing variety. No improvement about the premi- 

 ses is so perpetual in dispensing satisfactory results as growing shade 

 trees. As you sit in old age under the branches of the maple or elm you 

 planted when a young man, with your children and even to the third 

 generation about you, what field work of your life will give you more 

 pleasure? 



We answer, none. 



