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House & Garden 
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War Garden Activities in the Small Town 
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Little Trees 
At Little Prices 
For Every Purpose 
FROM 
little Jfarms 
BIRTHPLACE OF LITTLE TREES THAT LIVE 
Why you should buy trees and shrubs 
this year and why you should 
buy them early ! 
Before the war Europe supplied a large portion of 
the nursery stock used in America. That source of 
supply is now cut off. American growers have curtailed 
production during the past two years. Consequently 
there is bound to be a scarcity of planting material 
and prices will be correspondingly high. 
Be Forehanded—Save Money 
Buy little trees now, —plant them out for borders 
and edging for your vegetable garden, also in rows 
like vegetables and flowers. Employ the Little Tree 
Garden idea and set the trees out without additional 
labor; they will require practically no care; they will 
add beauty and charm to your vegetable plot, and they 
will be increasing in size and value all the time. 
It’s real economy and pleasure. 
With a Little Tree Garden on your land 
it is always planting season with you 
How many times while walking about your estate 
have you thought “A little blue spruce would ‘brighten 
up’ this corner” or “A few shade trees right here would 
be just the place to swing a hammock this hot day,” 
or “I wish that objectionable view on my neighbor’s 
property was screened from sight,” or “A mass plant¬ 
ing of Japanese Barberry with its bright red berries 
would be cheerful in the fall and early winter,” or “A 
privet hedge is just what I need on the front of my 
property,” etc.? With a Little Tree Garden you can 
carry out these small plantings with your own stock 
when the spirit moves. 
Sample Bargain Combination for Little Tree Garden 
52 PLANTS FOR $18.00 
This combination is comprised of eleven very desirable 
species for American planting—all American-born and Amer¬ 
ican-grown. Below are listed the varieties, sizes and quanti¬ 
ties of each that make up the combination. 
5 Silver (Concolor) Fir . 
2 Juniper; Red Cedar . 2 
5 White Spruce . 1 
5 Blue (Colorado) Spruce . 1 
5 Red (Norway) Pine . 1 
5 Douglas Spruce (Fir) . 1 
5 Arborvitae (White Cedar) . 1 
5 Sugar (Rock) Maple . 4 
5 Red Oak . 2 
5 Japanese Barberry . 
5 Re gel’s Privet . 2 
52 Plants for only $18.00 
This high quality stock has been twice transplanted and root- 
pruned. These prices include packing and delivery to the trans¬ 
portation company at Framingham, Mass. 
2 of these combinations-105 plants—for $ 34.00 
10 of these combinations 525 plants for 125.00 
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Send for catalog today. Illustrative and instructive, listing twenty 
million trees for ornament, shade and forest planting. 
Write for specific information. 
Give your conditions and object of planting. We will advise 
the proper planting materials and how to have complete success. 
lUttle Jfarmsi (Jgear Boston) 
NURSERIES OF 
American Forestry Company 
Division K, 15 Beacon St., Boston, Mass. 
(Continued from page 56) 
With a hearty get-together spirit stimulated by the local 
garden club there come better and more productive crops 
start, for now we know just what a huge 
problem the country has to work out. 
What a splendid thing it would be if 
in every town the people would pledge 
themselves to grow all they could, and 
to give their excess, either canned or 
dried, to relieve the needy families of 
our vast fighting force. What new life 
and vigor it would put into the men as 
the months drag along, to learn that 
their dear ones back home were thus 
being cared for. 
The Small Tree as an Accent Point 
I F you analyze any pleasing land¬ 
scape, be it great or small, you will 
discover that its attractiveness de¬ 
pends upon its composition, the blend¬ 
ing of its component parts, the sub¬ 
ordination of some elements and the 
emphasis of others. And invariably, I 
think, you will find one dominant fea¬ 
ture which sets the whole scheme in 
scale and serves as a focal point from 
which the eye can reach out and absorb 
the lesser details. It may be a water¬ 
fall or a giant boulder, a lake, a house, 
a tree or a splash of sunlight in the 
woods—always it is the one object 
which catches the eye and accents the 
others. 
The landscape architect knows all 
about these things. He knows, too, how 
utterly dead and meaningless is the un¬ 
accented composition—as spineless as 
an unpunctuated paragraph through 
which the reader’s mind struggles aim¬ 
lessly in an effort to discover what it 
is all about. So it comes about that 
skillful landscaping, be it on a small 
scale or a great, amateur or profes¬ 
sional, gives full value to accent points. 
That trees are many times selected to 
serve as these points is proof of their 
usefulness in such a connection. 
If we eliminate purely formal work 
from the discussion, we find that suc¬ 
cessful landscaping follows Nature s 
principles of arrangement. So let us 
consider a few natural examples of trees 
accenting the scheme. 
First there is the skyline tree. In 
the North Woods it is the single pine, 
dominating the hill crest for miles. 
Through New England the role is filled 
by elm or oak, “sentineling the ridge,” 
as Walter Prichard Eaton so aptly ex¬ 
presses it. South and west other spe¬ 
cies take up the task, but in every 
case the result is the same: a sudden 
tightening of the grip which the scene 
takes upon one’s imagination. 
Then there is the winter tree, which 
may be either in silhouette against the 
landscape or a background for it. The 
trim spires of the cedars against a 
snowy hillside come to mind; the last 
fringe of scrub oaks as you leave the 
woods and set out across the frozen 
meadows; the dark wall of spruces that 
hems in the lake at dusk. 
Examples might be multiplied indefi¬ 
nitely; but as this is not an essay on 
Nature, I am going to mention only 
one more—the boundary tree, the tree 
that accents by setting a limit, a stop¬ 
ping point, to a given section of a 
scheme. Of such is the fringe of wil¬ 
lows along the stream, marking it defi¬ 
nitely apart from the sunlit meadows on 
either side. The aged maple or elm so 
often seen at farm fence corners is an¬ 
other case in point, though here the 
criticism might be made that man’s con¬ 
venience has been as great a causative 
factor as Nature’s artistry. 
The relation of all this to your own 
landscaping work is simple: you should 
draw upon Nature for your basic effects. 
Adapt, adapt, adapt. The details may 
be artificial to an extent, but the domi¬ 
nant effects and accents should be pat¬ 
terned on natural lines. 
I could hardly over-emphasize the im¬ 
portance of a wise use of trees in the 
scheme. They serve admirably to give 
character to the somewhat monotonous 
sameness of many a shrubbery border; 
used in connection with a foundation 
planting of broad-leaved evergreens, the 
small conifer adds the needed contrast 
of line and character. As flanking ac¬ 
cents for entrances, or to terminate 
boundary hedges, few growing things 
are equal to small or medium sized 
trees. 
Do not think that a tree must be 
large in order to serve you. It is not 
only the exclamation point or the period 
that gives meaning lo the written sen¬ 
tence—commas and colons are quite as 
important. In fact, I am not sure but 
that the small tree’s value in this re¬ 
spect is as great as that of the larger. 
It is easier to obtain, and it will not 
always remain small, in the very nature 
of things. 
Plan, therefore, to punctuate your 
landscaping with small trees—-whether 
deciduous or evergreen, the laws of har¬ 
mony and Nature must determine. Do 
not scatter them hit-or-miss; each must 
make a definite contribution to the 
beauty of the whole, which your own 
sense of fitness will have to determine. 
Build up the scheme carefully as you 
would a prize essay. If every accent 
and each punctuation mark is accurate¬ 
ly placed, the finished product will read 
as smoothly as anything Cardinal New¬ 
man ever wrote. 
Robert Stele. 
