When You Start Trees From Scratch You Have Only Yourself To Praise

To everyone their own Eden. People who carve their home into a wildwood will feel like pioneers. Those who begin from scratch on a naked lot will, when they have brought their own trees there and reared them to a design, feel like creative artists. Each specimen will be theirs by choice, not chance, and they may feel more free than the wildwood folks to alter their composition as it develops: to erase mistakes and improve improvisations. All its parts will be beholden to the owners for their presence, not vice versa. From the very start the owners will have full control of, and responsibility for, all their trees' well-being.

Awareness of this last may weigh on new owners' consciences, like the future of their children, but in the end a pardonable pride will make up for growing pains. Curiously, more people have qualms about raising trees than worry about reproducing and rearing their own kind. They seem to think that luck has a lot to do with trees, or that you need a green thumb to ensure tree health and beauty. In comparison with children, trees are far more amenable, and hardy. Firmness of hand and purpose, and a cheerful patience, are all that you really need if you observe from the outset the basic needs of tree life, which are three: moisture, nourishment, and air space.

The first two are of course controllable through the soil. Less obviously, so is the third. When a young tree is transplanted, air for its roots is just as important as for its upper parts. Infant mortality among trees in new grounds results more often from suffocation than from any other cause. There is a sorry tendency, even among tree merchants who should know better, to plant young stock too deeply or in ground not loosened widely enough around the questing new roots. Worried that their plantings may blow over, people plunk them into narrow, hard-walled holes and pound them tight. Then they drench them with too much water, stuff them with too much food, fuss over them and peek at the roots to see "how they are doing." The time to peek at roots is when you buy the tree, or dig it afield yourself. But let us come to that phase of treescaping a naked acre after considering the over-all plan.

One of the first and most talented Americans to be called "landscape architect," the late great Frederic Law Olmsted, was irritated by the title. He said: "Landscape is not a good word; architecture is not; the combination is not. Gardening is worse. . . . The art is not gardening nor is it architecture. ... It is the sylvan art, fine art in the distinction from Horticulture, Agriculture, or the sylvan useful art." He defined his work, which was usually on the grandest scale, in terms too sweeping to apply to our small naked-acre problems. Olmsted cleared headlands to display their lofty contours. He felled whole woods to reveal distant mountain heights or valley depths. He restored the natural sweep of watercourses, adjusted the sites of ugly structures "with a motive to avoid unnecessary jar upon the foreground of a soothing prospect." And yet his catalog of work elements ends in "fixing . . . the position and outlines of a stable . . . the course of a walk ... or the height of a fence or of a hencoop . . . the answer in one word is—design."

The average practitioner of Olmsted's art today is perforce more tradesman than maestro. He is reduced to carving walnut shells instead of panoramas. He is scarcely needed by the home owner whose problems this book approaches. Too much good money changes hands in return for piddling professional preciosities, when anyone with half an eye for form and perspective can lay out his own modest green spot unaided. Within the limits here contemplated—an acre, more or less—the essence of good taste will be good sense. And in the smallest frame, there is always room for that personal touch which, however invisible it may be to others, will spell out self-expression. The Japanese in their huddled culture found this out and perfected it some centuries ago.

Full as the phone books are of landscapists, the house-and-grounds periodicals are even fuller of planting suggestions for new home owners. Many of these run to fancified effects, but invariably they show pictures of how different species look when grown in various combinations. If there is in your family no talent for sketching, amuse and instruct yourselves by playing with cutouts from magazines and catalogs superimposed on blown-up photographs of your house and lot.

As a matter of duty, not presumption, some basic suggestions are offered herewith. What you are likely to be after will come under four headings: warmth, shade, beauty, and privacy.

By warmth is meant a visual, not a physical, effect— a sense of the house and any outbuildings having come to dwell in, not just on, the site. Planting around the foundations is the answer to this need, but the commonest mistake that warmth seekers make is to overdo such planting, to swaddle the architecture so thickly with growths that in a few short years it is stifled. Most new houses nowadays are low in profile, and so should be their foundation planting. Evergreens give a warm look all year round, but beware of species that will spindle up, like spruce, cedar, arborvitae and cryptomeria. Low-growing by habit or easily kept so by trimming are mugho pine, pfitzer juniper, most forms of Taxus (yew), and such other stand-bys as box and prostrate Euonymus.

Solid banks of evergreens can become troublesome. A plague of scale, weevils, or nematodes can deform or wipe out the lot. Spaced apart by deciduous shrubs they are less care and, to most eyes, less trite. On a north side the deciduous species may not do so well and will perhaps be omitted, but still don't overcrowd the evergreens.

Shade can be as important for people indoors as out, but no tree planted for shade should be put closer than twenty feet from your house. Besides affording room for roots and branches you must think ahead to the time when too much canopy may bring dampness as well as coolness to your rooms. Repeated pruning of a tree to keep it from moldering or thrashing the architecture is a two-way nuisance—to yourself and the tree. Any shade tree ordained by Nature to grow much higher than your house is best planted, to start with, toward a border of your property. In per-acre terms, ten "big" trees will be found a great plenty, particularly if twice as many "small" trees, and some shrubs and flowers, need to be given living space.

The larger species like oaks, maples, ash, sycamore, and the major evergreens will start adding beauty to your grounds about half way to their maturity. Until then you will depend on dwarf or medium varieties, especially those which flower gaily, to dress up the place without delay. Most of the fruits will do this, and yield other returns as well. Their planting and culture will be dealt with in a separate chapter. Here, only a few reliable flower-bearers need be mentioned. First to mind come dogwood, redbud, hawthorn, fringe tree, goldenrain, mimosa, magnolia. In this category, variety is wide, and by consulting guides and catalogs a progression of blooms can be planned. As a general rule fruits and flowering trees will do best when planted where other trees cannot steal their sunlight. Be sure you know your compass points, and lay out a plat before you dig any holes.

Privacy is a desideratum of modern living not craved by all people. The last thing in the world that some ex-urbanites want is to be shut away from their neighbors. They want to see and be seen by their fellow beings. Togetherness is denied by hedges or bowers, they feel, and people who put up fences are egocentrics. Still, the desire for some privacy in at least part of the grounds is justifiable, and can be achieved without ostentation. Low-growing evergreens, again, are an easy solution around a cook-out fireplace or— be it ever so humble—to screen a pool. If you decide on some hedging, make it hemlock or Taxus, which respond well to feeding and clipping, rather than juniper or arbor-vitae, which may go out of hand. Barberry is a durable alternative, and in winter its merry berries make up for its fallen leaves. Spirea gives a lacy display in its spring season and can be grown densely without much trouble.

Collecting and planting one's own shrubs and trees are found by real converts to countrified life to be much more fun than calling up a nursery and ordering the whole job done at one masterful stroke, out of a catalog. Most fun of all is collecting over the years, like stamps or butterflies, either exotics from the nurseries or native wildlings scouted out afield. For wildlings you must first find good hunting grounds, then beg or buy permission, spot and prepare your prizes, and finally fetch them home. The process takes anywhere from a day to two years per specimen, but to the thrill of discovery is added a tang of the unpredictable, and often of instructive failure. It is better not tried by beginners before they have bought a few standard, cultivated trees at a commercial establishment and watched the whole transplanting process done by the book.

Before it is brought to your grounds, young stock should have been root-pruned at least once. At any good nursery you can be sure that this has been done. The effect is to condense the transplant's alimentary system and anchorage. After root-pruning, the feeder roots multiply in a bundle small enough to be lifted out whole, yet their filaments are long enough in totality to buffer the tree's vigor against the shock of uprooting. At the nursery, if you take the trouble to watch from start to finish, you will see how the tree is pruned topside (twenty per cent or more) and trussed up. Then it is trenched around at a radius of roughly five times the trunk diameter. The largest roots are lopped cleanly and the tree is gently tilted to be cut clear underneath, a yard down if there are taproots. The earth-ball is wrapped firmly in burlap and hoisted or skidded into a truck. (See Photo. 33.)

If your nurserymen are what they should be, you will next discover that more pains go into replanting the tree than into getting it out. The new hole should be dug half again or even twice as wide as the earth-ball. Topsoil will be set aside, subsoil discarded and replaced by other top-soil, or thoroughly mixed with old manure or a mulch. All the earth that is to go back into the hole will be made ready before planting is begun.

The hole will not be filled with water just before the earth-ball is lowered into it. The tree will be oriented as it grew (north side north) and its new depth will be matched carefully to its old one by setting the trunk's soil-line flush to the top of the hole. While one man steadies the tree vertically, another will start shoveling and packing earth in around it. When its position is precise and firm will be time enough to cut the bindings and lay back the burlap, which can be left in the hole to rot. As the filling-in is completed, water may be used to wash it down and settle it, but not to flood it. A raised rim of loose earth will be left around the tree for a water-catch through its first few months. (See Fig. 14.)

If the transplanting is bare-root instead of B & B (balled and burlapped) the procedure will be different. When the specimen is trenched around, its longer roots will be cut off evenly as before; but now, as the trenching progresses, they will be "combed" free of earth, from the trunk outward, with a spading fork or by hand. Great care will be taken not to damage any tendril feeder roots. As the whole spidery system is exposed, each main member and its feeders will be wrapped in damp burlap (old feed bags will do). In bare-root transplanting, elapsed time from combing the roots to reburying them is kept to a minimum. Roots out of earth are like fish out of water: even though you keep them doused they quickly parch.

When the bare-root tree is set up in its new stance, with wraps removed, it will be poised on a cone or mound of soil to receive its root-crown and let the roots run downward at their natural angles. If there is a taproot, a hole for it will be provided down through the mound, by punch-bar. (See Fig. 25.) If there is not room for all their ends, the roots must not be bent around or doubled back; they must be shortened, or the hole widened to fit. Great care will be taken, as before, to set the tree's depth correctly: better a mite too shallow than too deep. When the soil fill-in is begun it will be done slowly, thoroughly, by finger-work if necessary, to eliminate all possible underground air pockets. As soil is added it may be sprinkled with a hose or watering can (not drenched) to settle it closely and shut crevices. But too much water will create clods, which pack unevenly. Tamping will be continuous to the top, where again a saucer of loose earth will be formed.

Trees planted bare-root are more likely to need bracing than those with soil-balls to counterbalance them. Balance will be somewhat improved by pruning aloft, which should be more severe for B-R trees than for B & B. Guy wires running to stakes are impediments to mowing and snares for passers-by. A better bracing system is to drive tall lengths of old water pipe close to the young trunks and make them fast with figure eights of hose or (better) of clothesline, which will rot away soon enough if you forget to remove it. (See Fig. 15.)

Trees newly planted in the autumn, when rains increase, need less watering than spring plantings, which get drier as the sun gets warmer and whose new roots are sooner on the move. Trees should be watered through holes put down through the turf, where it can permeate before it evaporates. A good plan: When the planting hole for a new tree is dug, trowel two or three channels down its sides to root depth and set into them cardboard cylinders filled to the top with pebbles or finely crushed rock. (See Fig. 16.) Flooded to the brim a few times each week, such drinking tubes will offset the direst drought; through them, too, you can give the tree liquid feedings if necessary.

Fig. 16

Cardboard cylinder

After you have watched professionals transplant "material"—as they brusquely call it—from a nursery, you can save many dollars below list prices by doing the same yourself, where this is permitted to the customers. When you go foraging for specimens in the wild, the only new work you will have to practice is the root-pruning.

The smaller the saplings you choose at first, the better success you will have, but after a few tries there is no reason why an able-bodied man with a halfway able helper should not collect trees at least three inches in diameter. That would be a fairly considerable oak, ash, or dogwood for the family "estate." It would be a very fine cedar or spruce, birch or sassafras.

Field-grown wild specimens are best not only for their filled-out tops but for the manageability of their roots, which will likelier run only under sod than among rocks or the roots of other trees. Except perhaps for a few experimental "switches" which you may take home bare-root, your quest on a first field trip will be to locate and root-prune some sizable specimens for moving much later. Besides your topside pruning equipment, including tree paint, the tools you will need are a mattock (broad-bladed pick-ax), a "round-pointed" shovel, and perhaps your punch-bar to take strain off the shovel's handle in case of rocks.

A bushel basket or two may come in handy, as will be explained.

2nd season

If your prize is three inches thick at the height of your hip, sink your trench around it at a distance of fifteen inches from the trunk and down to where you encounter no more roots. (See Fig. l7.) Cut off each large root cleanly. If it is an inch or more thick, paint its raw end. Remove all removable rocks that you come to and when you have the tree standing clear in its little island, prepare to refill your trench with soil and some kind of mulch.

If you are in pastureland, your mulch problem is soon solved. One basketful of dried horse or cattle droppings will be ample. Or gather a couple of basketfuls of leaves or grass, dead or alive, and churn them into your loose soil as you refill and tamp the trench. Now, with your shears and pole-pruner, give the tree a going-over aloft to compensate for the feeders you carved off its bottom.

Give it a year to grow a new, concentrated root-ball and your tree will be ready to go home with you. If it is much larger than a three-incher, take its preparation in two bites. This year trench only halfway around, in three equal sectors equally spaced. Next year dig the other three sectors, and take up the tree on your third visit, two years hence. (See Fig. 18.)

When you do take the tree, follow the balled-and-bur-lapped or bare-root routine you learned at the nursery, with this addition: to make the newcomer feel more at home in your grounds, fetch with it a couple of basketfuls of the topsoil to which it is accustomed. Whichever of the two digging systems you use, don't try it without a station wagon or a pickup with a tailgate. Make yourself a skid of planking, up which to slide your load aboard, roots first. Earth-balls weigh about 100 pounds per cubic foot, and the finest tree that ever grew is not worth a hernia.

Some of the thriftiest trees one sees at homes are specimens of which the owners say with fond surprise, "That one started growing all bv itself out back. So we moved it up where it would show, and just look how well it's doingl"

Such trees are called "volunteers" and there seems to be something special about them. Out of the thousands of "flyers" sent off by a maple, or acorns from an oak, a few seem to have extraordinary vigor or to land in most favorable spots. Like stray kittens or puppies they will thrive where pampered thoroughbreds have pined away. This is natural selection ("survival of the fittest") at work—the principle put to work by the nurseryman when he culls seedlings to produce a strain with desired characteristics. The home owner, in a nursery plot of his own, can similarly play games with baby trees. He needs very few of the very best to supply his needs, and the effort involved is insignificant. To render his infant specimens more fit for moving in their second or third year, he can raise them in sunken cans or cartons, to get compact roots. (When they are transplanted, such roots should be separated and spread to keep them from "girdling.") Evergreens are easiest of all to bring along, as will be detailed later in some paragraphs about raising Christmas trees. When evergreens are moved, it should always be with an earth-ball, and they need no pruning above.

Fig. 19
Clear water
Humus or top soil
Heavy loam
Clay Gravel

Knowledge of what the soil in your grounds is like can be obtained very simply. Fill some milk bottles half full of water. Trowel into them samples of soil taken down to the two-foot level at various spots. Shake well. Let the bottles stand a day or so. Out will settle your soil's components—gravel at the bottom, then clay, then the loams, then the humus or topsoil, then a layer of clear water. {See Fig. 19.)

Before any planting is done, the chemical character of your ground should be determined and adjusted. Soil chemistry is for the farmer, not the home owner, except in one important particular: the pH index. This refers to the amount of free acid (H) or alkaline (OH) molecules in the soil. At pH 7 the soil is said to be neutral. The acid scale runs down to pH o, the alkaline up to pH 14, each degree in the scale indicating a tenfold change. Most trees like slightly acid soils ranging from pH 5.5 to pH 7. Above pH 7 most trees have difficulty absorbing some of the trace minerals they need—iron, manganese, zinc, copper, boron. A few species are acid-lovers, like sourwood and yellowwood. To find out what your soil reads, get your County Agent to test it, or test it yourself with a cheap litmus kit which your drugstore will sell you, with directions for its use. If the pH of your soil reads low, raise it by spreading lime. Where it is too high, lower it with aluminum sulfate.

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