74 



Garden and Forest. 



[April ii, 1888. 



to put themselves in a position to be able to supply eligible 

 building lots for summer homes at low rates. 



This should not be allowed. The bill is too general and 

 sweeping in its provisions. It gives too much power to the 

 Commission, and throws too much temptation in their 

 path. The policy of forest management, which its 

 passage would inaugurate, is, we are convinced, a danger- 

 ous one. The only reason that justifies the State of New 

 York in holding lands in the Adirondack region, is that the 

 forests which grow upon them may be properly protected 

 and preserved. These forests have an important and con- 

 trolling influence upon the prosperity of the whole State. If 

 they are to be parceled off into five-acre building lots 

 it will be impossible to carry out any scheme of 

 forest management. Settlers, even when they are rich, 

 and possess social and political influence, are a constant 

 menace to the forest. They increase the danger of fire; 

 they stamp out or clear up the undergrowth, even when 

 they do not destroy or injure the trees, and they are, when 

 they become numerous, a powerful incentive to railroad 

 building. 



I-f a wealthy citizen of this town should ask the pri\ilege 

 of building a summer-home for himself in the Central Park, 

 the proposition would be considered monstrous. The 

 proposition to use the Adirondack forest-park in a 

 similar manner only differs in degree; it is equally mon- 

 strous, and might become far more dangerous. There are 

 now comparatively few settlers in the Adirondack forests, 

 but the number is increasing every year, and if the author- 

 ity to lease land is given to the Commissioners, sooner or 

 later every lake will be lined with settlements and every 

 available site in the forest will have a cottage on it. All 

 the wild and rural charm of the woods will be destroyed, 

 their usefulness as a great popular sanitarium will come 

 to an end, and it will be merely a question of time, 

 when the State forests must be destroyed, or lose their 

 essential value. 



There is still territory enough in the Adirondack woods, 

 outside of the State preserve, for a large population, and 

 no hardship will be inflicted in shutting up the public 

 lands from settlement, except in the case of persons who 

 have made expensive improvements on land to which they 

 never had a title, and which now the)^ should be compelled 

 to vacate. 



The Commission has doubtless been led to advocate 

 this measure through ignorance of the dangers which its 

 adoption would entail in the end upon the forests. It is 

 not to be believed that they have done so in full knowledge 

 of what a forest really is, and of the requirements of even the 

 crudest system of forest preservation. They have now, how- 

 ever, an opportunity to show their zeal and public spirit. The 

 Adirondack forests are about to be cut up and seriously 

 injured by the building of numerous railroads. The forests, 

 or at least those portions of them which belong to the 

 State, can still be saved from this new danger by a vigor- 

 ous effort to secure restraining legislation. It is the duty 

 of the Commission to make this effort; its members will 

 find themselves supported in it by public applause and the 

 assistance of the ]jeople of this State. 



Street Trees. 



IN no branch of rural economy, perhaps, are Americans 

 so far behind the people of almost every country of 

 Europe, as in the selection, planting and care of street and 

 road-side trees ; and this is particularly true in the case of 

 the plantations made in most of our larger cities and their 

 suburbs. 



Two mistakes are almost invariably made in undertak- 

 ings of this character in the United States ; the work is 

 done too cheaply, and the trees are badly selected with 

 reference to future effect. Saplings dug from the 

 woods with mutilated roots and branches, are planted in 

 shallow soil, and are then left to struggle unaided against 

 the enemies which beset urban and suburban trees — 



drought and dust and starvation, gnawing horses and 

 ravaging insects. In the case, for example, of a great pub- 

 lic improvement now in progress near one of the principal 

 cities of the United States — an improvement which is de- 

 pendent entirely upon a growth of stately shade-trees for 

 its value and to which its promoters are fond of alluding 

 as " an American Champs Elysces" — it has been seriously 

 proposed to plant trees dragged from a neighboring swamp 

 in strips of earth four feet wide and only one foot deep, 

 resting on a bed of porous gravel. It is needless to say 

 that trees planted in this way could never do more than 

 drag out a brief and miserable existence. 



There is no poorer economy than trying to plant street 

 trees cheaply. Unless the work can be done well it had 

 better not be done at all. The ground should be thoroughly 

 prepared, and well-selected nursery-grovi-n trees, carefully 

 pruned for the purpose, should alone be used. The Ameri- 

 can habit of taking saplings from the woods, cutting off all 

 their branches' and half their stem, and then using them as 

 street-trees, cannot be too strongly condemned. The result 

 of such treatment is this. A fork is formed by two or 

 more horizontal branches pushing up from the top of the 

 cut stem. Water gathers and stands in this fork, and grad- 

 ually carries decay down into the trunk of the tree, de- 

 stroying it long before it reaches maturity. 



Street trees not only should be carefully selected and 

 thoroughly planted, but if anything like a satisfactory result 

 is expected, should be protected from gnawing animals, 

 and judiciously pruned as often as pruning is necessary to 

 keep them in proper shape. The mistake of too close 

 planting is almost invariably made in this country, and 

 trees planted thickly for immediate effect are rarely thinned 

 in time to prevent their injury by overcrowding. 



In the matter of selection we make as many mistakes, 

 and almost as serious ones, as in our methods of planting. 

 It is a well established rule, based upon common sense, 

 that trees of one variety only should be planted on one 

 continuous street or avenue. The reason is obvious. If 

 trees of different varieties are used, that uniformity essen- 

 tial in urban planting to the production of harmony of ef- 

 fect will be lost. Trees of different varieties grow different- 

 ly. Some grow more rapidly than others ; some come 

 into leaf and some lose their foliage earlier than others ; 

 some, as they approach maturity, assume a stately, and 

 others a graceful aspect ; and variety which may make 

 a country road-side beautiful, is entirely out of place 

 in connection with the formal lines of city buildings. This 

 rule is rarely observed in the United States. Trees of one 

 variety are rarely planted here in continuous lines. The 

 pendulous American Elm alternates with the rigid-branched 

 Sugar Maple, or a heavy Horse-Chestnut is seen between 

 two sprawling Silver Maples. 



Such combinations of trees are incongruous when planted 

 and age only makes them worse. Roads here and there 

 in New England planted exclusively with the Sugar 

 Maple or with the Elm, or in some of the far Southern 

 States with the Water Oak, serve to show how much more 

 beautiful and effective a street plantation can be made b)' 

 using one variety of tree, than by any possible combina- 

 tion of different varieties. Or, to cross the Atlantic for e.\'- 

 amples, the continuous avenues of Planes, of Lindens and 

 of Horse-Chestnuts in Northern Europe, of Sophoras in 

 Italy and of Ailanthus in Paris, clearly teach the same les- 

 son. 



Now is the time when plant-orders from all quarters and 

 from all sorts of people are pouring in upon nurserymen. 

 Many of these lists display an ignorance of the first prin- 

 ciples of good planting which distresses the expert nursery- 

 man, and the lack of assurance that the plants of even the 

 better lists will be arranged to advantage often troubles his 

 mind still more. For he knows that trees and shrubs, how- 

 ever well chosen, may yet be so unadvisedly planted as to 

 produce no harmonious effect; that they may easily be 

 placed so as never to really satisfy the hopes of their planter, 



