156 



IRISH GARDENING, 



4C 



IRISH GARDENING. 



55 



AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY. 

 Offices— 53 Upper Sackville Street. Dublin. 



(C 



Arbor Day. 



By ArchiBxVLD E. Moeran. 



PEOPLE who pride themselves on their 

 shrewd, hard-headed knowledge of for- 

 estry have been accustomed to scoff at 

 Arbor Day and its possible results, because 

 they say these results are not practical but 

 only sentimental, and therefore of no value, 

 and not to be encouraged. Shrewd and hard- 

 headed they may be, but in this they are 

 wrong" — I am not afraid to say it — absolutely 

 and entirely wrong, and when they go deeper 

 into the subject they are bound to admit it. 



Arbor Day planting, these people say, will 

 only result in little groups of trees scattered 

 here and there, in rows of single trees by our 

 roadsides and along the streets of our country 

 towns, and in ornamental trees roimd places 

 of worship, school-houses, court-houses, fair- 

 greens, and such like places. 



This they say is not afforestation at all. 

 Afforestation means the planting of millions of 

 trees in big blocks up in the waste mountain 

 sides, with the three-fold object of greatly in- 

 creasing the returns from such land, of pro- 

 viding a certain store of timber against coming 

 famine, and of giving a vast amount of employ- 

 ment in the planting and care of these woods, 

 and in the wood-working industries which could 

 be devoloped through them. 



Afforestation is what Ireland stands in need 

 of, and since at first sight Arbor Day does not 

 seem to help to accomplish this it is condemned 

 as a false trail. Now, it may be a change of 

 foxes, but it is not a false trail, and I am 

 anxious to persuade the readers of Irish 

 Gardening of this, because there is not one 

 of them but has it in his or her power to 

 appreciably advance the cause of afforestation 

 by adopting the Arbor Day custom. 



If the Secretar}' of the Irish Forestry Society 

 (i2 College Green) is written to he will send at 

 once pamphlets describing the scheme, and 

 how it is suggested that it should be carried 

 out, and advice on technical matters of planting 

 can also be had from him free of cost. Arbor 

 Day has been fixed for the ist of November, 

 but as this year that falls on a Sunday, Satur- 

 day, the 31st October, is the day on which 

 everyone who wishes their country well enough 

 to take a little trouble for it is asked to try to 

 arrange to plant even one tree. The Irish 

 Forestry Society very rightly are specially 

 anxious that managers and teachers of schools 



should on that day get the children to plant 

 trees in the school grounds, and caretake and 

 safegiuird them afterwards. Some small cere- 

 mony should be observed to impress the little 

 ones, and perhaps the right to plant a tree 

 should only be granted as a sort of prize to the 

 best behaved. The master of the ceremonies, 

 who should have been in communication with 

 the Forestry Society, and received from it 

 leaflets on the subject, should explain to the 

 children some of the elements of forestry and 

 what it has done for other countries. It will 

 be natural that those who have planted trees 

 will take the keenest pride and pleasure in 

 their growing, and this can be developed into 

 the blessed gift of love for all trees and an un- 

 derstanding of their advantages. Of course, 

 "grown ups " are asked to plant too — County 

 Councils, Urban Councils, District Councils, 

 private individuals. It is easy to see how each 

 can further the scheme, not by the number of 

 trees they plant so much as by the fact that by 

 planting any at all they widen and strengthen 

 the growth of a feeling all over Ireland favour- 

 able to forestry and to forestry schemes instead 

 of the existing apathy or even hostility. This 

 is not a matter of small importance. It is 

 almost impossible to exaggerate how vitally 

 necessary it is to the success of whatever State 

 scheme we are to be given. The United States 

 Poorest Service was faced with just this trouble, 

 but at considerable expense and with infinite 

 patience, trouble and tact through several 

 critical years it set itself to educate the public 

 to appreciate it — the Forest Service and its 

 objects — at their real value. In this it suc- 

 ceeded, and its extension has since progressed 

 by leaps and bounds. 



Newspaper and magazine articles and other 

 literature are, of course, of the greatest help, 

 but the wide circle of people who skip such 

 articles, and the wider circle whom they never 

 reach, are ungetatable except through some 

 such scheme as a tree planting day, which, if 

 it were widely adopted as it has been in other 

 countries, would awaken an interest in forestry 

 that would ensure the success of whatever pre- 

 liminary scheme we are to be given, and render 

 easy its development into a great national factor 

 towards the prosperity of our country. 



I had intended to say so much about the 

 immediate and direct advantages of Arbor Day 

 planting, of cosy homes being sheltered from 

 harsh winds by warm, green groves, of the 

 wide, bare, wind-swept, sim-scorched, rain- 

 bedraggled streets of our country towns and 

 villages transformed into leafy boulevards, of 

 added comfort for beast as well as man, but 

 space forbids, and I will only say this — Is it 

 not a verv striking and a very fascinating 

 ihouerht that there is not one of us but has it in 



