There they stand, the Trees, by far the largest living things we know, rooted fast in the earth with their heads raised to heaven. And they are there, or so we may tell ourselves, for our special benefit.

Close contemplation of a tall tree can arouse animal awe, if not reverence, in the most heedless mind. Put your hands on the massive bole. Look up through the soaring complex of limbs and fingers stretching aloft and outward for sunlight. Reflect that this is not a cold inanimate object like a stone, but a viable organism quick with protoplasmic life in every part, from the tenderest leaflets in its crown to gossamer filaments in the hidden root system. The ground space that its supporting sinews grip for security and probe for nourishment is even greater than the crown's wide spread of shade. Though it is insensate and—Aristotle notwithstanding—has no consciousness as animals know it, yet a tree has body temperature, circulation, digestion, sensitivities, and a cycle of growth and decline which, while far slower, is no less inexorable than an animal's.

Men are children of the sea, who crept forth and were nurtured by the earth. The earth-rooted trees are their greatest and oldest friends. Men have always known this and, whenever they could do so, have made their homes where trees grew, or have brought trees to their homes. Trees used to mean shelter, food, fuel, and weapons. Later they stood simply for the beauty and love of home.

Such psychological consideration of trees may be thought farfetched in prefacing a book intended only to render trees more understandable and manageable. It is ventured because people seldom seek to understand or manage anything they don't enjoy. And a great many people don't realize how much they do, or might, enjoy trees until they think into them instead of just looking at them and seeing only woods. In this, the esthetic sense, a tree resembles a work of art. "I like it," a man will say, "but I don't know why."

No reason is necessary. The hieing, the sense of a need being gratified by trees, is enough. But underlying gratification there is always cause, and to catch a glimmering of any cause is to sharpen its effect. When a man says, "I love that tree," he means the same as when he says, "That picture does something for me." He will the more convince himself (as well as you) if he can continue, "Because it seems to buttress my house," or "Because it commands all my grounds," or "It gives us shade in summer and a windbreak in winter." Or he may say, "We often sit out under it and watch the night." Some people personalize their trees: "There's grandpa, there's grandma, and that grove beyond is the rest of the family." Birth, marriage, and death trees are still planted by many families as a matter of course.

In his dawntime, mankind often worshipped trees, inhabiting them with gods or demons which had to be propitiated. Later the health and fortunes of individuals were linked with specific trees. Then a man's tree was protected by his friends to protect his life. Evil spirits could be drawn out of sick persons by splitting a trunk and passing the patient between, or by hanging on the boughs or laying in a crotch something taken from the sufferer, such as clothing or nail-clippings.

The most imposing tree ever imagined was Yggdrasil, the mystic great ash of Norse mythology. It symbolized all existence. Yggdrasil's crown pervaded heaven, with an eagle on the topmost bough. Its trunk supported earth, on which its sheltering branches shed honeydew. Its roots penetrated the nether realms of the giants, the gods, and of the dragon Nidhug, whose offspring gnawed them incessantly. It is a bit weird to realize that some sequoias and redwoods in their prime today were mature monarchs a millennium and more ago when Yggdrasil and other dream-trees first sprouted in the minds of men.

Yggdrasils, sequoias, and sorcerous trees have place in the daily lives of few people nowadays. But though fashions change, trees retain their hold on men's hearts and imaginations. And with trees as with other treasures, possession is nine-tenths of enjoyment's law. One of the happiest facts about trees, great and small, is that they are a myriad times more plentiful than most other forms of wealth, and much more public. For every feature tree that the richest of men may own in his walled estate, there are at large in public parks and unfenced forests countless trees equally magnificent, to be seen and enjoyed by all men. Better still, no man with any fair part of one acre is so poor or so unlucky that he can't grow as glorious a tree, of almost any species he chooses, as ever grew in Eden.

The poet Joyce Kilmer averred that "only God can make a tree." But the god of trees is benevolent. He approves the burgeoning of die ailanthus, "Tree of Heaven," even in Brooklyn and other asphalt jungles. In the suburbs, in exurbia, at a new homesite carved into the wildwood or out of barren countryside, the dendrological deity is open-handed to any degree a patient man may ask. And this benevolence extends not only to new trees started from saplings. It applies also to mature trees whose growing needs were neglected by early owners but which are not too far deteriorated for revival. Giving older trees a new lease on life can be even more satisfying than planting and cultivating youngsters. The latter process is uneventfully natural. The former often borders on the miraculous.

Over the past fifteen years this writer has watched, as a practicing tree lover and consultant, a special aspect of the U.S. population explosion. More and more people are being forced out of their cities and strewn among the suburbs or beyond—into rural villages, old farmsteads, or brave new diggings miles from nowhere.

Many of these human transplants become, for the first time in their lives, the owners of trees.

Land, grass, shrubbery—these the newcomers can understand and evaluate. Trees of their own are something else-possessions entirely new in kind and caliber. Most new householders value the trees that came with their real estate. How could they fail to when they see so many other sites being stripped of every stick and stump? But they haven't the foggiest notion which of their species are which, or in what condition, or whether anything should be done to improve and preserve them.

Offered here is a non-technical handbook for tree owners, new and otherwise, setting forth the rudiments of tree physiology, growth, care, culture, and values. The chapters are so arranged and developed as to benefit—it is hoped— all degrees of experience. A certain number of people think they know all they need to know about their trees and what can and should be done for them. For such this book is not designed. Many more people regard their trees, like their children, as fond objects of continuing interest and concern, whose needs change with the seasons, the passing years, the vicissitudes of nature. For these this book is designed to:

State simply the facts of tree life.

Reduce to reasonable limits the cost of tree care.

Insulate the inexperienced tree owner against the alarums and excursions of high-pressure "experts" and "dendricians."

Tree care is not an exact science. But there is in it more basic method than inspired art. A substantial amount of "expert" care can be administered quite as well by an attentive novice as by pontifical professionals. By no means all tree owners have proclivities to do-it-yourself. But perhaps twice a year, which is enough, most healthy persons who have secured their treasure in the good earth will feel an urge to help good things grow therefrom. If their own hands and backs are not up to it they will hire common labor and, out of their own reading, get the work done on an intelligent boss-it-yourself basis.
It is this book's aim to help along these lines, with basic "show how" text and illustrations on such elementals as tree feeding, light pruning, cavity and flux treatment, the relief of girdling roots. It surprises lots of people to learn that a hundred pounds of good tree food properly installed by themselves can save a $25 bill from the "surgeon/' Or that a few inches of pipe or tubing correctly inserted can deter heartwood decay.

For the higher mystique and techniques of treating trees, advice is offered on how to pick and pay tree experts, what to tell them, what to ask them, how to check on their work. True practitioners of tree care are among nature's noblemen, to be trusted and cherished. But the woods are full of cynical, piratical frauds and gypsy butchers.

Because fresh arrivals at the status of tree ownership— and experienced ones as well—find themselves in a variety of locales and ground conditions, typical combinations of these are prescribed for under separate headings. The tree problems of an owner sandwiched in suburbia will differ greatly from those of a settler in the wildwood. But the theme throughout remains the same: home is where your trees are.

Giving them care is as worthwhile as keeping your house in repair; in fact, even more so. Trees grow in value. Houses can only obsolesce. When you renovate your house it remains impassive. It will look and function better for a while, but it offers no active response, and soon resumes its decline.

In contrast, try feeding your hungry trees generously.

Relieve their self-strangulating roots. Give them a "hair-do" by raising droopy branch levels, pruning out deadwood, thinning overgrowths. Treat their scars and sores with edged tools and wound dressing. And what do you get? Young or old, your trees will respond with surges of new life and energy, silent and slow as is the way of trees, but nonetheless visible, grateful, and rewarding.

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