Evening star., 1921-05-22
Passing Garden Trees.

THE garden fruit tree in Wasning-
ton has gone the way Of the fam
ily coach and it is almost as hard
to find a pear tree, cherry, or
peach tree in the back yard as TO
find an iron watchdog on the front
steps.
| ton there used to be good fruit trees.
They may not have been or much
commercial importance, but they lent
their aid to the family table in the
| way of fresh ripe fruit ana preserves.
Several things have conspired 10
bring about the disappearance OF the
back yard fruit tree. In the first place
the back yard has shrunk so that after
furnishing a site for the garage thGre
is just room enough for little piot
a narrow border Of sweet williams
and sweet alyssum. Modern back
wards are not as capacious as inc
ancient back yards of thirty or ntty
years ago. and if by chance a man, by
his own thrift or hs by bsaS 1ard in
the city he is apt to call it "a lawn
at the rear of the house" and to
plant it with dwarf golden arpor
vitae, little silver frs, a magnolia
or towering apple. The piant.ns
ple tree does not seem to occur to
him. He goes in for landscapes,
gardening and not Tor fruie raising.
There is a sudden popularity IN
back yard crane al, aroors; nat bv pv' .uY ,n,s res
markable increase in the. popularity
of grapes as fresh fruit, but because
of other uses to which grapes may
be put. Reasoning by analogy one
of blackberry bushes and perhaps
there will be garden beds OF daude-
lions instead of lawns.
1t is in the suburbs at the back OF
the house and in the side yard that
the old fashioned family fruit tree
holds its own. The suburban man and
his wife and children still hold
fond feeling for the fruit tree which
casts it's shade near the kitchen steps
and gives the family the beauty Of its
bloom in spring and its crop or frult
in summer and in fall.
It is not alone in Washington that
the fruit tree which used to grow
close to the house has passed away.
Lamentation that the household fruit
tree has gone, like the door knocker
and the name plate on the front door.
is heard in other cities. In letter
to the New Orleans TimesPicayune
an old-fashioned subscriber writes:
Who Of rs that has passed the half-century
css Scss eSes os yeserdaSs The Clean bright
trees in the spring. decked with honey
heavy" blossoms and in the fsil M laden laden with
but a memory: The Chickasaw plum trees
hearing red fruit and yellow as large as dol
lars. now shrunk to the size Of nickle and
quite useless. The abundant grape vines
bearing small but delicious grapes have passed.
and lastly, the passing Of the he, our justly,
famed Celeste. These trees have either ceased
to hear. or hear fruit 30 small and blighted
that they are but GHOSTS Of their former
selves" All have shrunk to this little meas
ure before the insidious San Jose scale: the
white moth. the white fungus. ETC.. aided and
abetted by the Argentine ant.
1t cannot be that the San Jose
scale, white moth, white fungus and
Argentine ant have been wholly re-
sponsible for the disappearance of the
tree which bloomed and bore its ten
der. luscious fruit in the Washing'o,
back yard. It cannot be. because
Washington is the home Of the De
partment of Agriculture. and it is
hard to believe that the scale. moth.
fungus and Argentine ant would have
the nerve to ply their infamous ways
at the very doors of men who study
their tricks and devise deadly sprays
and fumes to ctrcumvent them.