The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
15 Basic Ways To Landscape Your Homepage
Large spreading trees are usually more suitable in the back of your lot where they can provide shade and privacy. Tall, columnar and low growing dump trees are more valuable from an artistic standpoint to provide the dignity, balance and pleasing proportions so important to an average si/e house.
The different varieties of maple trees are outstandingly attractive deciduous trees. Usually they are round headed with some species grow ing to 50-foot heights. Their leaves vary from light green to a scarlet red. The leaves are beautifully veined and all varieties are highly colorful in the fall.
Maples grow rapidly and you will find them adaptable to almost any soil condition, although they prefer moist, rich soil. I hey make excellent specimen or street trees. Some varieties are artificially dwarfed and are suitable for planting near pools or in a small forest garden.
If it's color you want, take a look at the sugar maple which has orange, gold and scarlet fall foliage. Even more spectacular is the Scarlet maple, the leaves of which are maroon purple from spring to late fall.
Birch trees ire available in many interesting and useful varieties. Usually symmetrical, erect and rapid growing, some have unusual weeping or pendulous forms. Their hark is a parchmenthke white in color and the tapering leaves are a bright green. Birch tries grow in all soils but thrive best in fertile acid ground.
The silver, or cut-leaf, weeping birch has light green, finely dissected leaves. It is particularly striking as a lawn specimen and is very effective when planted near a backyard pool or fish pond.
White birch trees are available from your nurseryman already grown in clump form, with three or more distinct trunks on one root system. Their main value lies in the pictorial and artistic effects created by planting in relationship to the house.
There are other varieties of hardy deciduous trees carried in stock by most nurserymen. Some comparatively new trees are gaining popularity as replacements for American elms killed by disease. Svich a replacement is the Chinese elm which is a hardy and fast grower, providing shade within a few years. The new disease-resistant Buis-man elm was developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. It probably will not grow as large as the American elm, but it is compact and lovely.
The Moraine locust, a thornless vase-shaped honey locust, is another newly developed tree of tidy growing habit. It is hardy, will survive drought or cold and is tolerant to smoke and dusty air. The Moraine locust is a patented variety and has proven remarkably suited for a lawn specimen of outstanding beauty.
Other excellent deciduous trees include many varieties of smaller flowering fruit trees—plus the spectacular Magnolia soul-angeana, the blackberries, poplars, the majestic white oak and the faster growing but less hardy pin oak.
