An advantage that woods-grown trees have over their cousins in fields and lawns is that they were nourished from infancy by leaf mold, which is organic. Remember this when you decide about lawning around your selected trees. They will appreciate your not raking away all their fallen leaves every autumn. Lots of people let their power mowers chop the leaves into mulch and leave it lying to benefit grass and trees alike. If you are going to insist on raking, have the bulldozer do one last thing for you before it departs: scoop out a leaf pit, like a small trench silo about 8'Xi5'X47, off in some corner where your annual leaf harvest can be dumped to rot and disintegrate for use another year. If you have oaks, try to save their leaves separately. Any broad-leaved evergreens you may want to cultivate, especially hollies, will thrive on oak-leaf mulch, which is strongly acid.

So far, only that situation has been considered where a new home owner has control of his trees from the beginning. But the suggestions offered above apply with equal force when the new home you are buying or debating has already been started, or even completed, by a builder-developer. Knowing what to look for, you can tell whether he has conserved or laid waste the tree values in the property. If he has any tree sense, chances are that he has conserved values and will co-operate with you in improving them while there is yet time. If he has massacred the trees, sheer off and buy elsewhere.