STREET PLANTING 91 



diameter at the base, tapering to about i 'ft. at the top, where the rods 

 are spiked. This can be thrust into the ground far enough to render the 

 whole sufficiently firm to make it not only a guard but, by tying the 

 young tree to the top band, a support as well. Various patterns of tree- 

 guard, both in wood and iron, are employed, but the matter need not be 

 further discussed here. 



It is a mistake to close up all the ground close to the trunks of trees 

 planted on the pavement. When once trees have become well established 

 and of considerable age, they are capable to a surprising extent of rising 

 superior to adverse root conditions. One may see, in and near streets, 

 large trees apparently quite sealed up by stone or other pavement from 

 surface moisture and air, yet thriving and vigorous. The roots of many 

 such trees have, no doubt, reached unsuspected distances. It is other- 

 wise with young trees. During the first few years of their existence in 

 streets they should be artificially watered during dry hot spells, and means 

 should be adopted to allow water and air to reach the roots naturally. 

 The best way, where the sidewalks are paved, is to have iron gratings laid 

 down round the tree, which provide a dry footing and enable both 

 artificial and natural moisture to reach the roots. By taking the gratings 

 up occasionally, the surface soil may be broken up. Visitors to Paris will 

 have noticed the large circular gratings, 8 ft. or perhaps more in diameter, 

 at the base of many of the trees in the boulevards, and men early in 

 summer mornings watering the trees through them from the street 

 hydrants. 



Pruning. The vexed question of pruning street trees is one of the 

 most difficult to discuss on paper. Nothing in connection with their 

 treatment is so much a matter of individual judgment and taste exercised 

 on the spot. As will have been gathered from what has already been said, 

 I am of opinion that much of the barbarous lopping so commonly 

 practised at present is inevitable, in view of the average width of streets 

 and the natural dimensions of the trees now mostly planted in them, 

 but that with the use of more suitably habited and smaller trees much of 

 it might be avoided. 



One of the commonest defects noticeable in street trees is that the 

 branches are too numerous and too small. If one compares the branch 

 system of a big tree of almost any sort with a young one of the same 

 species, it will be seen that the number of main limbs of the former is 

 scarcely one-tenth that of the latter. The fact is, of course, that a fight 

 for existence and a selection of the fittest is going on amongst the com- 

 ponent parts of a tree just as it is with the tree itself in a state of Nature. 

 The most vigorous and best placed branches crowd out and eventually 

 smother the others. That is how Nature prunes. But in our streets, 

 where each tree is overhauled and its branches pruned and regulated at 



