The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Art Of Landscape Architecture
To follow the seasons and make each one interesting as it comes forward in turn will always have much value for many people. One of the earliest things to come in leaf and flower is the willow, and as a lawn plant it has many good qualities. It will live and thrive in almost any soil, especially a wet one. The fresh-looking flowers it bears in early spring are always a kind of revelation or forestate of good things to come. Not all willows are of equal value in lawn planting although there are numerous species and varieties. The difficulty with the willows is that they are liable to become naked and bare of foliage as they grow older, and like most soft wooded trees their beauty is apt to be short lived. One of the best willows for its retention of beauty, bushiness, and general health is the common white willow, Salix alba. It is superior for this reason to the red-stemmed willow and the yellow, Salix vitellina aurea, and especially the weeping willow, Salix baby- lonica. The latter grows often into a fine tree with great spreading branches, but it is brittle and suffers much from ice storms, which, helped by windstorms, generally succeed eventually in destroying it. There seems to be little reason for using this willow along watersides. Its drooping habit is not specially attractive, being stringy and wanting in fulness. It is generally considered a sad-looking tree, suitable for graveyards and pools of water, why it would be hard to explain. The pussy willow (Salix caprea) is a fine bushy kind. It is important to remember that the members of the willow family need pruning strongly in order to keep them in good shape.
Other rapid-growing trees for the spring lawn are poplars, the oriental plane tree, alders, birches, and the forsythias, fortuni and viridissima. The latter kinds are excellent shrubs, blooming early with abundant yellow flowers and keeping a rich, compact, and in the case of Forsythia viridissima a graceful foliage throughout the summer and autumn. The viridissima looks well on the borders of shrub groups, because its branches droop close to the ground. There is another shrub, Berberis thunbergi, that is compact, of vigorous growth, and fine throughout the season with its glossy foliage, summer flowers, and autumn colour. It is one of the best shrubs for the lawn. Its relative, the common barberry, is also an excellent shrub, fine in masses with its bright flowers and fruit. The Spircea thunbergi is perhaps the prettiest of spiraeas with its light-coloured graceful foliage, early white flowers in great masses, and its lovely autumn colour.
