344 Landscape Gardening 



"and telling us nothing about pestilential odors and suckers, 

 tell us a great deal about 'rapid growth, immediate effect - 

 beauty of foliage - - rare foreign trees,' and the like, it is 

 not surprising that we plant what turn out, after twenty 

 years' trial, to be nuisances instead of embellishments. It 

 is the business of the nurserymen to supply planters with 

 the best trees. If they supply us with the worst, who sins 

 the most, the buyer or the seller of such stuff?" 



Softly, good friends. It is the business of the nursery- 

 men to make a profit by raising trees. If you will pay just 

 as much for a poor tree, that can be raised in two years 

 from a sucker as for a valuable tree that requires four or 

 five years, do you wonder that the nurserymen will raise 

 and sell you ailanthuses instead of oaks? It is the business 

 (duty, at least) of the planter to know what he is about to 

 plant; and though there are many honest traders, it is a 

 good maxim that the Turks have --"Ask no one in the 

 bazaar to praise his own goods." To the eyes of the nur- 

 serymen a crop of ailanthuses and abeles is "a pasture in 

 the valley of sweet waters." But go to an old homestead 

 where they have become naturalized and you will find that 

 there is a bitter aftertaste about the experience of the 

 unfortunate possessor of these sylvan treasures of a far-off 

 country.* 



The planting intelligence must therefore increase if we 

 would fill our grounds and shade our streets with really 

 valuable ornamental trees. The nurserymen will naturally 

 raise what is in demand, and if but ten customers offer in 

 five years for the overcup oak, while fifty come of a day for 

 the ailanthus, the latter will be cultivated as a matter of 

 course. 



The question immediately arises, what shall we use in^ 

 stead of the condemned trees? What, especially, shall we 



* We may as well add for the benefit of the novice, the advice to shun 

 all trees that are universally propagated by suckers. It is a worse in- 

 heritance for a tree than drunkenness for a child, and more difficult to 

 eradicate. Even ailanthuses and poplars from seed have tolerably 

 respectable habits as regards radical things. A. J. D. 



