68 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Evergreens. 



REV. C. S. HARRISON, RETIRED NURSERYMAN, YORK, NEB. 



Plenty of evergreens judiciously planted will check the 

 fury of Old Boreas as he sweeps down from the north and give 

 you a cozy shelter from his wrath. They bring the greenness of 

 summer into the heart of winter. Animals greatly appreciate 

 their protection, and when the sun shines on cold winter days you 

 will see them sunning themselves on the south side of the ever- 

 green hedge. 



In our bleak northwest, where cattle are fatted in the open, 

 often the protection they get is simply a wire fence — a poor 

 shelter when the blizzard rages. A very expensive fence, too, it 

 proves, for the loss of flesh on a hundred steers in a long, cold 

 spell would build sheds enough to protect them. We can at least 

 have evergreen barns. 



Lumber is high and will be higher, and attention is now 

 given to a more comfortable shelter than all out of doors. 



Take young bull pines grown from Black Hills seed, four 

 years old and twice transplanted, and make a double hedge — rows 

 ten feet apart and ten feet apart in the row, breaking joints. 

 Have your hay and straw stacks in the center. Give your young 

 trees the best of care. Build a fence inside to protect the trees 

 from the stock till they get sufficient size, and give them the best 

 of cultivation. Don't depend on the weeds to care for them. 

 When well established they grow from twelve to eighteen inches 

 a year, and sometimes they make two feet. So it won't take long 

 for a fine shelter. 



If you want to move your farm 200 miles south, then plant 

 a lot of evergreens and stay right where you are. When it is 

 thirty below, put your themometer in the open and down it goes. 

 Now take it into the evergreen grove, and up it goes five degrees. 



Plant for winter effect. Have a foliage garden to look at in 

 the cold weather. Evergreens vary much in their tints and color- 

 ings. The scopularum, or silver cedar, is cone-like in form, much 

 like the Irish juniper, as it shimmers and sparkles in its silver 

 frostings. The Douglas spruce has a dozen different shades and 

 forms. 



The concolor is the most beautiful of all evergreens, retain- 

 ing its form and color down to old age. The Scotch pine is 

 light green. The ponderosa has a deeper color. The picea 

 pungens stands guard in your yard like a faithful sentinel in 



