Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1915 — HOME TOWN HELPS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOME TOWN HELPS

CONTROL OF STREET TREES Municipal Oversight Imperative I* Conclusion Arrived At by Student of the Subject. After many years’ study of the street-tree problem, digesting reports from the principal cities in this country, viewing such work done in California, one can form but one opinion as to how the work may be properly instituted and. prosecuted. No satisfactory permanent Improvement in street planting may be done except under direct and strict municipal control. But very few property owners are competent to choose the right tree for a specific street, and not one such may live in your block or in your street It is all a • question of fitness, of which its natural ability to thrive under the hard conditions prevailing in city streets is by far the most important point Then comes longevity, for a tree should stand for centuries. Even after the right tree is planted it must have intelligent care bestowed, and all trees on one street should be watered and pruned alike, set at the same distance apart and given the same general care, the latter consisting of numberless little things that make an important factor as a whole. Even the control of insect and other pests becomes a serious matter early in the life of any tree. Individual property owners are possessed of too great a variety of tastes, interests, ideas of responsibility and degrees of hanging on to the purse stringß ever to make unorganized effort more than a failure or even organized effort much of a success.—Los Angeles Times.