EVERGREENS FOR SHELTER. 403 
EVERGREENS FOR SHELTER. 
A. V. ELLIS, AUSTIN. 
(Read before the annual meeting of the Southern Minnesota Horticultural 
Society.) 
“He who plants a tree, plants a hope,” so wrote the poet,and I would 
add to that, not only does he plant a hope but a constant joy, which 
in Minnesota, at any rate, we may call a shelter. 
If thirty years devoted to the study and propagation of evergreens 
be sufficient excuse for me to intrude my views and experience 
upon this assembly, then I feel at liberty to present the following 
short and very incomplete paper. 
Plant evergreens for shelter in preference to any deciduous trees, 
always. First, because they give you shelter when shelter is most 
needed. The foliage is as dense in winter asin summer, which is 
not true of any variety of deciduous trees. Second, because of their 
rapid growth and protection from winds and storms almost from 
the beginning. The cottonwood, willow and balm of gilead give 
little or no protection until four or five years old, and thefirst and 
last named little after. A cottonwood is moreover a dirty tree, in- 
asmuch as it sheds its cotton annually, the wind blowing it about 
the yardand making it during its shedding season a nuisance. It 
sticks to everything, and it is hard to get ridof. The cottonwood 
will perhaps grow more rapidly, but it does not produce so bushy 
a top as the evergreen and, consequently, has not so much value as 
a windbreak. The willow makes a better shelter than the cotton- 
wood, but a belt of Scotch pines two rods wide is,in my mind, worth 
forty rods of willows to protect you from a Minnesota blizzard. 
Third, an evergreen belt, besides being a prime shelter, is a thing of 
beauty and an attractive decoration to any farm orcity lawn. This 
is noticeably a fact in the winter time when all other trees are bare. 
There is something unspeakably cheerful in a spot of ground 
which is covered with trees that smile amid the rigor of winter and 
give usa view of the gayerseason inthe midst of that which is. 
most dead and melancholy. How warm and cosy a fair sized 
bunch of evergreen trees looks after, for instance, riding for miles 
across the bleak prairies with no sight of trees except an occasional 
willow or cottonwood windbreak bending sear and cold in the 
wintry blasts. 
As to the variety of evergreen best adapted for purposes of shelter, 
probably the Norway spruce deserves first place, for it is hardy and 
a fast grower, andits foliage and limbs will grow thick if a little 
care is taken in training the growing tree. The Scotch pine comes 
next—itis doubtless much more hardy, but itis also much more 
homely. Its foliage is coarse and not so denseas that of the spruce, 
moreover the twigs and limbs are not so tough but a big fall of 
heavy snow will often break them. Again, evenin planting trees 
we must not consider youth and beauty so much as old age—the 
latter of which is the longest age in the life of a tree. The Scotch 
pine grows ugly as it grows old, while the Norway spruce holds 
well the beauty of its youth. 
