Shade Trees for Streets and Parks 101 



dens of Cologne, the horse chestnuts, lindens, elms, maples and 

 sycamores of Bonn, and the lindens of Berlin are the source 

 of pleasure to all visitors to those cities. In our own country 

 Washington is noted for its oaks. The Norway Maple and 

 Sycamore are also being propagated in the municipal nursery 

 <>!' Washington, and freely planted with good success. Kansas 

 City is justly famed for its parks, boulevards and beautiful 

 avenues of elms and maples. Memphis, Tennessee, is another 

 city which has expended large sums of money to secure suit- 

 able trees for the many parks and boulevards and today stands 

 at the head of American municipalities in the per capita area 

 devoted to parks. The Park Department of Buffalo, N. Y., 

 spent $267,000 in 1910, and through its Bureau of Forestry, 

 planted 3250 trees and pruned about 6,000 trees already on the 

 streets. East Orange, N. J. with a population of 45,000, which 

 is approximately that of Lincoln, Nebraska, has since 1905 

 employed a tree expert to look after the street and park trees. 

 Many streets have been planted to better species of trees than 

 were formerly found there and many trees have been set out 

 on newly established streets. Pruning and spraying have 

 also received attention so that the streets present a very fine 

 appearance to the visitor and are a source of great pleasure 

 and satisfaction to those who live there. 



Trees promote the health of the inhabitants of a city by 

 lessening the intense heat of summer and by purifying the 

 air. The direct rays of the sun are cut off and impure air and 

 gases are taken up by the leaves. The roots, by absorbing 

 much water which would otherwise be left in the soil, make 

 cellars and basements drier. Trees also aid, to a certain ex- 

 tent, in the circulation of air due to differences in tempera- 

 ture above and below the trees. 



Trees also have a distinct economic importance. They 

 not only increase in value very rapidly after planting but the 

 value of the property abutting the streets along which trees 

 have been planted is increased to a large extent. No one 

 cares to purchase a piece of property to use as a home with- 

 out having some trees to cut off the rays of the hot summer's 

 sun and to check the force of strong winds which blow during 

 the greater part of the year. The first cost of planting is 

 very small when the value of the trees in later years is taken 

 into consideration. 



