March 19, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



137 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargknt. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1890. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Editorial Articles :'— Street-Trees. — The Hackberry Knot 137 



Japanese Dwarf "Plants at Paris George dimming. 138 



Some Old American Country-Seats. V. — Montgomery Place. (Illus- 

 trated) Charles Eliot. 139 



Vegetation in Southern Alabama Carl Mohr. 140 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson. 140 



Berlin Letter Dr. Udo Dammer. 141 



Cultural Department:— Notes on Strawberry Culture A. W. Pearson. 141 



Winter Notes on Trees and Shrubs J. C. Jack. 143 



Coelogy ne cristata John Weathers. 144 



The Spring Garden J. N. Gerard. 145 



KohlRabi W. H. Bull. 145 



Symphoricarpos racemosus F. H. Horsford. 145 



Seasonable Hints P. O. 145 



Correspondence: — Prairie Forestry B. E. Fer now. 146 



Orchids at Flatbush A. Dimmock. 146 



Specimen Plants at Wellesley .. F. L. Harris. 146 



A Gardener's Problem M. Barker. 146 



Native Shrubs in a Mild Winter E. S. Farwell. 147 



The Tulip-tree from Seed S. R. 147 



Periodical Literature 147 



Recent Plant Portraits 147 



Notes 14 8 



Illustrations : — Montgomery Place — Entrance Front 142 



Montgomery Place — An Avenue 143 



Street-Trees. 



A YOUNG tree on the border of a city street can never 

 be said to have congenial surroundings, even when 

 the utmost pains have been taken at the outset to plant it 

 properly and to give intelligent attention to its needs so 

 far as possible thereafter. Many kinds of trees will abso- 

 lutely refuse to live in an atmosphere filled with smoke 

 and dust, even when the drainage system of the city does 

 not rob their roots of the water which is essential to their 

 nourishment. The hardships which a street-tree must 

 undergo make it all the more necessary that only the 

 most promising individuals of the kinds best suited to en- 

 dure the trying conditions of city life should be selected. 

 This means that nursery-grown trees, with abundant roots 

 and pruned for the purpose, should invariably be used. 



It is plain that trees of one variety only should be 

 planted in a long, straight row parallel with the lines of 

 buildings in a continuous street. Much of the desired 

 effect will be lost if the trees vary in form or size, or ex- 

 pression, or rapidity of growth, or in the time of putting 

 forth their leaves or shedding them. An avenue of Ameri- 

 can Elms, with their lofty overarching tops, is always 

 beautiful, because the charm of each tree is renewed in the 

 next, and the effect of the whole is constantly intensified 

 and multiplied by repetition. An avenue of stately Tulip- 

 trees is equally beautiful, but in an entirely different way. 

 The same might be said of a double row of Pin Oaks, 

 where there is space for their drooping lower branches. 

 But if all these trees were intermingled, and Sugar Maples, 

 Horse Chestnuts and others still were added, the result 

 would be incongruous and contradictory. There would 

 be no continuous lines extending through the entire vista 

 to help the perspective and to give unity of character and 

 expression and consistency of purpose to the whole. And 

 yet in our city street-planting it is the common practice to 

 allow each lot owner to select the tree which suits his 

 fancy. The immediate effect is bad enough, but it grows 

 worse as years roll on and the individual trees become 

 more and more unlike each other as their peculiar char- 

 acteristics are more strongly marked with age. 



But even when the best selection is made, disappoint- 

 ment and failure will be the inevitable result unless the 

 ground is properly prepared and the planting carefully 

 done. A street grade is often made several feet below the 

 natural surface of the ground, and of course this subsoil is 

 not in a suitable mechanical condition to receive the roots 

 of trees, nor does it contain the necessary nourishment. 

 Or, again, a street may be raised as much above the 

 natural level, filled in at the bottom, perhaps, with large 

 rocks which have been thrown together so as to leave air 

 spaces between them, and this open foundation may be 

 covered with a stratum of all sorts of rubbish. No tree 

 can be planted in such a situation with any promise of 

 health or long life. In most cases, an excavation twenty 

 feet across and three feet deep, filled in with good loam, will 

 make a safe place in which to plant a tree, but even here the 

 tree will be doomed to early death if it is just over such a 

 foundation of broken rock as has been mentioned above. 

 We might add that street-trees should always be planted far 

 enough apart to give each one an opportunity to develop 

 into its best proportions, but perhaps many persons who 

 read this already feel inclined to resent the frequent itera- 

 tion of these elementary principles. And yet there is 

 hardly a city in the United States where every one of the 

 ordinary, common-sense rules and precautions which 

 should be regarded in planting street-trees is not almost 

 constantly violated. The fact is, that this article was itself 

 suggested by some planting in this city which recently fell 

 under our observation. 



West End Avenue, a broad street on the heights be- 

 tween Riverside and Central Parks, is laid out with a strip 

 of turf some eight feet wide on either side between the 

 sidewalk and wheelway. In each strip is a double row of 

 trees, not planted in pairs, but alternately — that is, with 

 one tree near the outer margin of the grass, and then an- 

 other near the inner margin. The shortest or diagonal dis- 

 tance between these trees is about fourteen feet. They are 

 Red Maple saplings, apparently pulled up from a swamp 

 where they stood very closely, so that they had grown up 

 straight and slender to a height of probably fifteen feet, with 

 very few, if any, side branches. The tops were all cut off at a 

 height of about ten feet, leaving bare poles above ground 

 and a few of the larger roots below. These trees were 

 planted in the autumn of 1887 and the following spring, 

 and have, therefore, had two summers to grow in, but as 

 a matter of fact there has been no growth. Clusters of 

 little branches have been thrown out at the tops and at a 

 few points on the sides of the mutilated stems, and these 

 tufts of foliage may prolong the life of the trees for a time; 

 but they are rather signs of approaching death than of life. 

 Many of the trees are already leaning over and ready to 

 fall. In short, here is a street nearly two miles long, 

 planted with at least three times as many trees as should 

 have been used — trees of a variety unsuited to the position 

 they occupy, and not a single individual of them all a 

 specimen well grown and pruned for this purpose. The 

 city has paid some $20,000 for this work, which is absolutely 

 worthless — worse than worthless, indeed ; for while these 

 trees are dying, years arc wasted in which good trees 

 could have been making substantial growth, and even 

 now they would have been delighting all beholders with 

 their beauty, and still more with the cheerful promise of 

 increasing attractiveness for years to come. 



If this were an isolated instance it would be sufficiently 

 depressing, but equally bad examples of contract-planting 

 by municipal authorities can be pointed out in almost every 

 one of our large cities. The streets of our towns and cities 

 will never be shaded by handsome and well-cared-for trees 

 until they are placed in charge of some competent and 

 responsible officers, whose duty it is to superintend all 

 planting, and all pruning, too; for now no street-tree, how- 

 ever beautiful, is safe from the attacks of axes and saws 

 in ignorant hands, which not only destroy its symmetry, 

 but leave it with raw wounds to invite the entrance of de- 

 structive fungi, which bring disease and premature death. 



