Plea for Urban Trees Very ardent pleas have reached me
to join in the defence of urban trees. Recently a number of fine trees in the St. John's Wood neighbour- hood were reduced to the state of mere trunks, because, as it appeared afterwards, the gardeners employed by the owners of the sites found the fallen leaves a nuisance! This cutting mania has extended to road-men in country places. They seem to regard hedges and trees as mere "litter louts," not at all as things of beauty or homes of birds. There are few more lamentable vices than tidiness in the wrong place. 'Trees, of course, are as aesthetically important in towns as in country ; and in most London areas it is happily quite-hard to find a view unredeemed by a tree or two. London is congenial to a great number of trees, even yews,,in spite of a recent ridiculous protest against the yew hedge in urban parks. What beautiful examples of even tenderer trees, such as almond and cataspa and the more delicate poplars, are to be seen in Battersea Park, that triumph of the art of landscape gardening.
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