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Close proximity to the house is not an important criterion either. Looking from a little distance at trees is often more satisfying than seeing how they flatter the architecture. Fine outpost trees will enhance your grounds as a whole, and your sense of space. Where conflicts threaten between valued trees and the building, driveways, or pipelines, make early decisions and avoid compromise. If a tree must go to make way for a wall or footing, take it out promptly and forget it. Later this would cost you much more, with the finished work in the way. If you really do want a tree that "interferes," change the blueprints. Architects have some feeling for trees. Many builders have none. Most of the men on bulldozers and back-hoes develop definite blind spots, if not visible horns. If the earth-moving and fine-grading are within your control, mark the trees you want to save with bright tags or rags. Baffle or board up the trunks of those near work traffic. When your house is staked out, stake out your best trees also. The stakes should be driven and stringed out around each tree beyond its crown area, where its roots run. (See Chapter III.) Have it understood with the contractor that no rapacious jaws or blades are to invade these areas, or any heavy machine treads. Impaction of the soil can damage roots, by suffocation, as badly as cutting or exposing them will. So can piling earth over them more than three or four inches deep, even temporarily. Graders have a way of piling earth against tree butts and then leaving it there on the theory that the fine-grading, by hand, will be done soon enough. It seldom is, and those pile-ups can be fatal after just a few weeks. |
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