Evening star., 1937-09-05
NEW GARDEN SPOT
Research Center of Agriculture Puts Beauty
Into Beltsville Area and Educates
c. c. C.. Members.

To protect banks OF streams, $50, 900
yards of gravel and earth has been
moved. To improve water-supply sys-
TENS, more than $4,000 feet of pipe
has been laid. and $4,000 feet more
must go in. To drain wet lands, 4.
inch tile is the smallest used, and
the enrollees laid Al 900 feet last year.
At least $4,000 feet more will be
needed. Lakes and ponds are being
developed as rapidly as labor will
permit. Included in the 10 acres Of
water basins already improved is an
old ore pit. Sites for some so acres
of ponds have been surveyed for de-
velopment.
ONE of the greatest jobs at the
Center from the c. C. c. view
point is the forest Improvement prof.
ect. More than 10000 acres must be
thinned, cleaned and stocked. This
ties in with soil-erosion checking
Many trees will be removed, others
transplanted for a time and reintro-
duced later. The enrollees assist the
scientists of the department in achiev-
ing just the wanted balance of cover
to further their experiments. A ma
Jor tree stock to be planted will be the
loblolly, long needle pine. These
trees are well adapted to Maryland
soils and have been introduced sat-
isfactorily in large numbers of State
projects.
In the planting, some 100000 trees,
shrubs, vines and other plants will
be set out This could be accom-
plished over 10-year period with
the present force. Last year 10,862
paintings were made Each road or
building project is followed up by
landscaping crews who clean out all
Objectionable brush in the woodland
visible to the eye. In such projects
as the Biological Surveys Patuxent
research refuge, the minor slashings
were piled to make cover for wild
life
However imposing and inviting other
projects may be, none is the equal of
the nursery in sheer beauty Fiji
teen acres in extent. this orderly
garden within garden is character
lied by row upon row of valuable
trees and flowers.
Starting from scratch in the Fall
of 1884, when glass and some rem
nant equipment were secured from
the discontinued animal disease lab
oratory at Bethesda, the c. c. C.
enrollees have worked steadily at the
nursery. Gift stocks we're obtained in
small quantity from the State and
from the Botanical Gardens. 1t was
seen early in the development of the
Center that the cost of proposed
nursery stocks, if obtained CONNER
cially, would be prohibitive The
nursery, maintained at q minimum
cost, was the result. The site had to
be cleared, roads built to it, the land
graded. drained and fertilized. Briars
and brush had complete possession of
what is now a beautiful spot indeed.
ILLUSTRATIVE of the scale of the
nursery project, Joseph L. Stearns,
jr., supervisor of Camp 4, which does
all the landscaping, listed the num-
bers of some of the species growing
there. Among the rarer are 300 white
fir, ~ mirnosa, BIT Amur maple, 9
Towering almonds, several red and
cut-leaf naples. so Nordman frs,
342 red-leaf barberry. 1852 Chinese
chestnuts. IS fringe trees, IS jap
anese ounce, Is hardy oranges, nu-
merous European and paper birches
and boxwoods. SO dogwoods. so bitter
sweets, 81 japanese weigels, Rus
sian olives, q Japanese anonymous,
Al Korean forsythias, 8 inkberry, l46
Fortune holly, numerous Myer, Savin,
Irish and Greek jumpers, l4O gratis
OF Towering crabapple, 230 japanese
umbrella pines, "a japanese cherry
(many double flowering), 10 plumed
retinospores, 538 coral berry, 467 ORR
entail arborvitae, Z Japanese yews
and 1,275 Canadian hemlocks.
In some cases Stearns and his
charges obtain poorly shaped trees,
odds and ends of shoots, roots and
what have you, then prune, spray
and doctor them back into vigorous
plants. In addition, the enrollees raise
large variety Of seedlings and prop
agate by grating and cutting.
Stearns took civil service exami-
nation for forester recently and passed
with the highest rating of any appli-
cant in the State Of Maryland. He
declined appointment. however, eager
to carry on the work of beautifying
, the Center. Stearns has trained sew
eral able men from among the en-