98 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



gest opportunity, that of putting the programs starting in the kinder- 

 garten to continue all the way through the colleges. 



Our present generation is not participating in these programs. We 

 can work together and start right in on the elementary grades and 

 teach our children not to litter, to plant trees. They will take the 

 message home, and I think we will have a better United States. 



Mrs. ELIZABETH WEIHE. We have our citizens meeting together, 

 people who have never met in one room before and it looks as if we 

 will have to have a new auditorium. I can assure you it does work. 

 We are sometimes called the bedroom of Washington. Mrs. John- 

 son looks our way, so we have to get busy. 



MICHAEL DOWER. May I say first it is a privilege for a group 

 of us to come to this country. I would like to make three points. 



The first is about trees. In Britain we have started taking up the 

 U.S. technique of planting trees. We are also starting to bring 

 them in in ways which have not yet been extensively used in the 

 United States, by taking trees not from nurseries but from the woods 

 and forests. 



I am struck in visiting America by the fact that so many of your 

 cities have great woods right next to them where anyone could 

 bring trees without the expensive preparation over the years neces- 

 sary in nurseries. I would think you could set yourselves a figure of, 

 say, 1 million shade trees for the whole of the United States, each city 

 bringing from the woods and forests around it those trees which are 

 native to its region and so thereby bringing regional character into 

 the city. 



The second thing I want to suggest, which we have used with effect 

 in Britain, is that these trees are only seen as one side of compre- 

 hensive improvement schemes in towns. We take an area in a 

 town and we completely facelift it at one time utility lines, signs, 

 shop fronts, street furniture, the whole lot at one time. The amaz- 

 ing thing is that the pressure of opinion and of simultaneous action 

 forces people to do things which they would have no incentive to 

 do if they were asked to do them in isolation, which would be rather 

 like asking one gangster to disarm. These schemes are initiated by 

 the Civic Trust, which is a private national organization financed by 

 industry and concerned with increasing the beauty of British towns 

 and countryside. 



Now this could easily be applied to any part of main street 



