PLANTING time is at hand. In the country farmers are 

 sowing their fields; the folks in town are planting their 

 gardens. Along with these should go another kind of 

 planting, the planting of trees. 



Many of the earliest settlers of Minnesota came from the 

 wooded districts of the Eastern states. They knew the com- 

 fort and something of the value of a grove on the farm. 

 Hence the coveted quarter sections were those which had at 

 least small tracts of woods. These were particularly plen- 

 tiful in the southeastern part and were rapidly taken up. 

 Then the settlers went up and down along the borders of the 

 timber belt, and gradually into the prairies of the West and 

 Southwest. 



In one respect the people who settled on the fertile prairie 

 soils of Minnesota were befriended by Nature. There was 

 no part of the state to which she had not given a climate 

 which permitted and aided the growth of at least a few spe- 

 cies of trees. Those e^arly settlers who were wise did not 

 endure long the rigors of the unbroken prairie winters. They 

 planted quick-growing trees for protection, preferable cotton- 

 wood, willows, boxelders, soft maples. So that by the early 

 sixties more or less planting had been done around farm 

 houses in the South and West. 



First Object Was Protection. 



The first object of this planting was protection from the 

 cold winds of winter. Hence the settlers planted the rapidly 

 growing varieties named. In some few instances these were 

 varied with other hardwoods, and but rarely with conifers, 

 by the early settlers. These exceptions have since been in- 

 creased in number, both in rehabilitating old groves and start- 

 ing new ones. Hence, while cottonwood, boxelder, soft maple 



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