16i ANNUAL BEPORT 



EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, ST. PAUL, MINN. 



Hon. Wyman Elliot, Mhmeapolu : 



Dear Sib : I made all my plans to go to Minneapolis this afternoon, 

 but have been detained on a requisition case and cannot leave. And 

 thus it goes. Respectfully yours, 



Jan. 19, 1888. 



A. R. McGiLL, 



The following paper was read by Mr. Cleveland : 



STREET AND LAWN PLANTING WITH TREES AND 



SHRUBS. 



By H. W. S. Cleveland, Minneapolis. 



Nothing connected with the practice of my profession as a land- 

 scape gardener has impressed me so deeply and painfully since coming 

 to Minnesota as the vast amount of wretched work in tree planting 

 from which no satisfectory result can ever be hoped, and the whole 

 cost of which is literally thrown away. The explanation is not diffi- 

 cult. It results primarily from ignorance and false economy, and sec- 

 ondarily from the unscrupulous greed of a class of men who have no 

 reputation to sustain^ and are ready to impose upon the parsimonious 

 by doing poor work at a low price, or to swindle those who are willing 

 to pay a good price, by furnishing worthless stock. 



The rapid growth of new cities and towns creates everywhere more 

 or less of the fever of speculation in land. The rivalry of real estate 

 dealers incites them to seek to render their suburban additions attract- 

 ive to customers by adorning them with foliage, and applying the prin- 

 ciples which govern the ordinary transactions of commerce, they seek 

 to accomplish the object by a wholesale contract to furnish and plant 

 the trees. 



The real estate men are not as a class familiar with trees or their 

 culture. Many of them do not know one variety from another, or at 

 least as one of them frankly said to me, " I know an elm when I see 

 it, and I call all other trees maples." 



It is not to be supposed that such men can have any realizing con- 

 ception of the careful management required in transplanting and sub- 

 sequent nursing of trees in order to secure the vigorous, healthy 



