CHAPTER IX 



TOWN PLANTING, AND THE TREES AND SHRUBS 

 THAT ARE BEST ADAPTED FOR SMOKY 

 LOCALITIES 



PROBABLY no work connected with horticulture requires 

 more judgment and good management than the planting 

 of trees and shrubs in urban districts. The materials and 

 soil of which streets and town gardens are usually formed 

 are ill fitted for maintaining a healthy condition in trees and 

 shrubs for any length of time. This fact, coupled with the 

 impurities of the atmosphere in densely populated centres, 

 has to be constantly borne in mind. In more favourable 

 districts all that is necessary is to open a pit of sufficient 

 size to contain the roots of the tree or shrub to be planted ; 

 but in towns the soil, often as hard as iron and composed 

 mainly of refuse building materials, contains but little 

 plant food. For many years past careful observations 

 have been made, not only in London, but in Glasgow, Liver- 

 pool, Manchester, Warrington and Dublin, as to which trees 

 and shrubs succeed best in the smoky localities of each town, 

 and it is mainly by tabulating these different experiences 

 that satisfactory information on the subject has been 

 obtained. Coal smoke from the chimneys in the larger 

 and more crowded centres of industry is no doubt bad 

 enough, but, when we have to contend with an atmosphere 

 that is largely impregnated with the outcome from chemical, 

 gas, or iron works, the difficulties to be encountered are 

 correspondingly increased. 



The injurious effects of smoke have become much more 

 pronounced during the past century, and Sir William Rich- 

 mond, R.A., told the annual meeting of the Coal Smoke 



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