TREES IN THE SUBURBS.
[To Inn EDITOR or me "Sesersroa."1
Sin,—Will you kindly allow me through the medium of your columns to call the attention of your readers to an important question which is bound sooner or later to affect the interests of many P Thirty or forty years ago various suburbs of London were rightly regarded as health resorts with dry bracing air and sunshine; by degrees the land was built upon and private gardens were laid out, planted with shrubs and flowering trees, but inter- spersed with young forest trees to protect and nurse the shrubs until they were established. The intention was that when this object had been attained the stronger growing timber should be eliminated. This, however, has not been done, and the result is that some districts are becoming, in places, almost like primeval forests, dark and dank, effectually blocking out sunshine and air, cutting off the fine views of the houses, and reducing such areas to damp, rheumatic neighbourhoods, in many parts of which it is difficult to secure any proper growth of vegetables or flowers. It would be invidious to mention the offending districts and roods by name, but there are many cases where the trees are meeting overhead, transforming the formerly bright, sunny roadways into damp 'umbrageous tunnels. At least two-thirds of ouch trees ought to be removed, and the disposal of the remaining third should be carefully considered. I give place to no one in my love of noble trees in their proper surroundings, but as things are going at present much injury is being done, the some remark applying to many suburbs round London. The Borough Councils should compel all frontagers to prevent their trees growing over the footpaths.
Among the trees which are the chief offenders are planes, syca- mores, elms, poplars, limes, oaks, horse chestnuts. Ac., most of which should be entirely removed. Now that timber for construc- tion, for fuel, rind for firing is 80 valuable, it becomes a national duty to turn such trees as these to good nee, and were their places taken by fruit-trees the whole district and community would be the gainers. My own garden is rightly regarded as one of the brightest in its neighbourhood, for the simple reason that we keep the trees within proper bounds, in addition to which our flower garden is also planted with fruit-trees, the bloom of which in the uprise is a great charm, and the fruit in the autumn a great asset.
May I in conclusion mention as an illustration of the condition to which I refer, that on the southern slope of the suburb in which I reside the land was once an open, sunny Surrey down, with wide fields, and spaces in which hardly anything was growing of greater sine than gorse and heather? To-day it is mainly a dense growth of forest trees, in which in the autumn a damp smell of decaying vegetation prevails and in which the fresh winds of heaven have little play. Such an atmosphere is not conducive to the health of children and other members of the community, although it probably is to that of mosquitoes.—I am, Sir, Ac.,
A Lona or SONS/112UL
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