The Naked Acre. part 1

To everyone their own Eden. People who carve their home into a wildwood will feel likepioneers. Those who begin from scratch on a naked lot will, when they have brought theirown trees there and reared them to a design, feel like creative artists. Each specimenwill be theirs by choice, not chance, and they may feel more free than the wildwood folksto 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 thevery 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 futureof 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 andrearing their own kind.

They seem to think that luck has a lot to do with trees, or that you need a green thumb toensure 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 reallyneed 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 thesoil. less obviously, so is the third. when a young tree is transplanted, air for itsroots is just as important as for its upper parts. Infant mortality among trees in newgrounds results more often from suffocation than from any other cause. there is a sorrytendency, even among tree merchants who should know better, to plant young stock toodeeply 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-walledholes and pound them tight. Then they drench them with too much water, stuff them with toomuch food, fuss over them and peek at the roots to see “how they are doing.” The time topeek at roots is when you buy the tree, or dig it afield yourself. but let us come to thatphase of treescaping a naked acre after considering the over-all plan. one of the firstand most talented Americans to be called “landscape architect,” the late great FredericLaw 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 notgardening nor is it architecture. … it is the sylvan art, fine art in the distinctionfrom Horticulture, Agriculture, or the sylvan useful art.” he defined his work, which wasusually on the grandest scale, in terms too sweeping to apply to our small naked-acreproblems. Olmsted cleared headlands to display their lofty contours. he felled whole woodsto reveal distant mountain heights or valley depths. he restored the natural sweep ofwatercourses, adjusted the sites of ugly structures “with a motive to avoid unnecessaryjar upon the foreground of a soothing prospect.” And yet his catalog of work elements endsin “fixing . . . the position and outlines of a stable . . . the course of a walk … orthe 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 thehome owner whose problems this book approaches. too much good money changes hands inreturn for piddling professional preciosities, when anyone with half an eye for form andperspective can lay out his own modest green spot unaided. Within the limits herecontemplated – an acre, more or less – the essence of good taste will be good sense. Andin the smallest frame, there is always room for that personal touch which, howeverinvisible it may be to others, will spell out self-expression. The Japanese in theirhuddled culture found this out and perfected it some centuries ago. full as the phonebooks are of landscapists, the house-and-grounds periodicals are even fuller of plantingsuggestions for new home owners. many of these run to fancified effects, but invariablythey show pictures of how different species look when grown in various combinations. Ifthere is in your family no talent for sketching, amuse and instruct yourselves by playingwith cutouts from magazines and catalogs superimposed on blown-up photographs of yourhouse and lot. As a matter of duty, not presumption, some basic suggestions are offeredherewith. 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 thehouse and any outbuildings having come to dwell in, not just on, the site. Planting aroundthe foundations is the answer to this need, but the commonest mistake that warmth seekersmake is to overdo such planting, to swaddle the architecture so thickly with growths thatin a few short years it is stifled. most new houses nowadays are low in profile, and soshould be their foundation planting. Evergreens give a warm look all year round, butbeware 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, mostforms of Taxus (yew), and such other stand-bys as box and prostrate Euonymus. Solid banksof evergreens can become troublesome. A plague of scale, weevils, or nematodes can deformor wipe out the lot.

Spaced apart by deciduous shrubs they are less care and, to most eyes, less trite. on anorth side the deciduous species may not do so well and will perhaps be omitted, but stilldon’t overcrowd the evergreens. Shade can be as important for people indoors as out, butno tree planted for shade should be put closer than twenty feet from your house. Besidesaffording room for roots and branches you must think ahead to the time when too muchcanopy may bring dampness as well as coolness to your rooms. Repeated pruning of a tree tokeep it from moldering or thrashing the architecture is a two-way nuisance – to yourselfand the tree. Any shade tree ordained by Nature to grow much higher than your house isbest 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, andsome shrubs and flowers, need to be given living space.

The Naked Acre