106 ANNUAL REPORT. 
moved and transplanted. Wild stocks grow mostly to tap-root and are much 
more difficult to start, besides being tender from the shade in which they are 
accustomed to stand. 
The most satisfactory trees for general planting, for both ornament and wind- 
break, are the Scotch pine, white pme and Norway pine. Balsam fir and white 
spruce are perhaps more fashionable for bowers. Arbor vite is best for orna- 
mental hedges and screens, and juniper savin for low borders. 
It is useless to plant evergreens in ground already occupied by the roots fo 
other trees, unless these roots are cut off for some distance and kept off till the 
evergreens get well advanced in their growth, and even then they will make a 
very slow growth at the best if the other trees are of fast growing kinds and 
have much the start. The failure of evergreen planting in old village lawns, by 
the sudden collapse otten seen in July or August, after the trees have made a 
month or two's growth, is due mainly to this, as the shade trees are usually 
planted some years earliest and their roots extend throughout the premises be- 
fore the evergreen planting is commenced, sapping the soil, and by their strong- 
er growth immediately choking the young evergreens to death. 
The best sizes for ordinary planting are trees from two to five feet high—say 
such as are classed in the trade as two to three feet or three to four feet. Larger 
ones can be planted safely up to eight or ten feet, and even higher, but they need 
more care, and these larger ones should only be handled by experts. 
I doubt the propriety of farmers or any person but nurserymen or amateurs of 
ample means and leisure undertaking to plant out untransplanted seedling ev- 
ergreens, as is sometimes recommended on account of their cheapness. They 
require too much shading and delicate care for the first few years for the average 
farmer to attend to. 
It would be cheaper in the end to leave the transplanting and care of seed- 
lings to the nurserymen, and buy them when of proper age and strength of root 
and top for open unprotected culture. An outlay of twenty to thirty dollars, 
according to the plan, will provide an evergreen windbreak for a set of farm 
buildings and an orchard of two hundred fruit trees, about eight feet apart is a 
suitable distance to plant. In ten years they will close up the line if well 
mulched or cultivated, and in cold, bleak winter days, gomg upon the leeward 
side of such a shelter is, as has been well said by Mr. Hollister in one of bis ad- 
dresses, like driving into a barn. As an instance of their rapid growth under 
favorable condition, I will state that ‘the Jewell Nursery of Lake City, which 
was established in the year 1868, already has Norway spruce and Scotch pines 
nearly thirty feet high, and filling space sixteen feet in diameter. 
As protections for orchards, to hold the snow and prevent root killing, also to 
retard the early growth and premature blossoming in the spring by keeping the 
earth cool and serving as a barrier to the hot south winds, as well as to save 
the fruit from being blown off by the summer and autumn gales before it is 
ripe, evergreens are invaluable in orchards, for profit, indispensable, as all the 
commercial apple growers in the west, are already well aware. They are the 
only close shelters worth planting for orchards, as their roots take up but little 
surface, room or strength of the soil. 
Beware of fast growing deciduous trees for orchard windbreaks, such as the 
willows, the Lombardy poplars and the cottonwoods. Their roots run as far 
underground as their tops grow upward, some of them further, and absorb all 
the means of plant life within their reach. Such shelter as the boa constrictor 
gives its victim will these trees give to fruit trees. They shelter and they kill. 
