The Story of our Trees
By Pamela Stewart
I grew up in England and always had a special interest in trees. Were they just beautiful, good for climbing or very old? Many trees in England are more than a hundred or more years old. I’ll admit to having a special love for the English Beech tree; its smooth silver grey bark, its delicate lime colored leaves in early spring, and the carpet of bluebells below. I loved how the roots stretched out above ground, looking for all the world like great elephant feet reaching to hold this regal tree firmly tethered.
There are only two varieties of English Oaks, with their lovely Linnean names: Querqus robut and Querqus petreae sessile. They are a glorious sight. Huge, strudy trees with a wide canopy, trunks gnarling as they age. Oak bark was used in tanning, and wood was an integral part of shipbuilding in the English navy before metal replaced them. All English trees are so highly valued, and there are strict to protect them from indiscriminate felling.
Years later and married, my husband and I emigrated to the United States, via a year in barren Newfoundland, where the sparse vegetation and would-be trees were tundra-like. After fifteen years in St. Louis, we came to beautiful Iowa and bought fifteen and a half acres of land in Cosgrove. There it was, a field of hay without a single tree except for the box elders in the hedgerow.
We decided to build our home on the highest point of the rolling land. The house was partially built when we moved in. The architect built it bermed into a hill, so that we could have a walkout lower level. And yet the main part of the house is on ground level in the front. What could be more wonderful than to eat breakfast and sleep on the deck which is at tree height!
At once we began to plant trees. First the windbreak at the northwest corner, mostly conifer and oaks. Then a single pin oak down by the pond. We found out there are more than eighty species of Oak in the United States. When our first grandchild, Nick, was able to stand, we planted a Colorado Blue Spruce, the same height as him. Nick at 27 has grown, but the tree has more than quadrupled him in height (but not girth!)
The next major planting was to put several rows of trees along the length of the drive…amur maples and oaks, and a row of pin oaks with a long patch of prairie in front on the north side. We also planted a row of cottonwoods and Chinese elms as nursery trees on the south side. Then we planted the asparagus bed, known as the Watergate Garden, since we dug it as we listened to the Watergate hearings that led to President Nixon’s impeachment.
We continued planting trees that we ordered from catalogues or the Johnson County Conversation office. We filled in the windbreak with more oaks, gradually working our way downhill on either side of the house, adding green ash, catalpas, bur oaks, osage orange, spruce fir and pine, and a few mulberries that just settled there and, of course, thrived. Closer to the house we planted some specimen trees—a little leaf linden, apple, peach and apricot trees, a cluster or two of Amelanchiers, early flowerers with delicious fruit, which the birds wanted to keep for themselves! For several years we had peaches and apricots from our own trees, but then they died a slow death, finding the harsh winters and hot rainless summers too much for them. The old Russet apple survives to this day, and it had a bumper crop in 2008.
We had very little rain for the first four years of our planting. To this day, I can see Mark with a sweat stained headband, carrying buckets of water from the pond to water all the trees and tide them over the dry spell. The smaller trees died, as did our Sandpoint. That was when we drilled a well over 600 feet deep. We laughed when the well driller arrived in a Cadillac!
The well drilled, we now had water by the gallon, but it was loaded with iron and sulfates and calcites. Then began our adventure with available water treatments, salt additives, filters to extract the iron, eventually a reverse osmosis unit coupled with two filtering cylinders, gave us mostly iron free, good tasting, safe water. Along with a mechanism outside to drop in one chlorine tablet as the pump was activated.
After all this was achieved, we laughed at ourselves for falling for the idea that the rain runoff from the roof would give us plenty of safe water, to be collected in a deep cistern on the south slope. While we were relying on that fast disappearing water, the Oxford fire department would come and refill the cistern. Of course, the girls had their own water problems. Whenever they took their long showers, the water would run out, and they will never forgive us for the reddish color that their hair assumed from washing in the iron rich water.
Our children, two teenage daughters and a son, helped us plant trees, as did anybody who came to eat with us. They were asked to plant a few trees, and they did not all get names. One of our biggest Red Oaks is known as The Winokur Tree, planted by Dr. George Winokur, the head of the Psychiatry Department. It was the first and last tree that he had ever planted.
We made a serious mistake by planting a patch of locusts. Oh, they grew well, thorns and all. We soon realized that they were highly undesirable and needed to be cleared away. I swear that every now and again for at least fifteen years I would find a few locust seedlings in the most improbable places.
Many of the oaks were grown from acorns, gathered wherever we traveled – mostly bur oaks and red and white oaks. These trees now have offspring of their own. My husband found some acorns in Oregon that grew in to three wonderful elegantly tall Fastigiate oaks. I also planted an acorn I found in my pocket after I had been to England, which has grown well. But the Johnson County Forester noted the tree and said that it was looked healthy, even though it was not a desirable thing to have done. There are rules about bringing seeds and plants from other countries! There are a number of these young oaks, growing in the garden of friends and neighbors. It gives me enormous satisfaction to see my “children” as they grew in other people’s gardens. Gardeners love to share plants and seeds and make friends.
One of our most favorite shrubs is the Fringe Tree, Chionanthus virginicum, whose leaves appear fairly late in the spring. Then come the gloriously scented droplets of pale cream fringed flowers, their scent rising up to the deck where we sit for breakfast every morning. As the scent permeates the air, I hear the call of the Baltimore Oriole from one of the south side oaks, followed by the bright orange flash as he flies by, only to resume calling his mate from another tree. One day as I sat at my desk, a Baltimore Oriole was perched on the rail of the deck. He kept flying at the window, and I realized he was trying to get yarn from a piece of macramé, which hung in the window. I got his message and laid some strands of wool and string on the rail. Back he came in a flash, and took every last strand for his nest.
There are quite a few gardens in and around Iowa City that have fringe trees grown from the seeds of our original bush. The tulip tree is another favorite, with the most lovely flowers in the spring, pale yellow and cup-like with orange deep down around the sepals. Sadly, as the tree grows it is harder and hard to see the flowers, though the shape of the multi-pointed leaves is so pleasing. Liliodendron tulipfera grow very well in Iowa.
As I write about my tree experiences, I can recall most of the trees that we planted. There was the Little leaf linden that got a greenstick fracture in a windstorm. Mark the Doctor bound the area, and lo and behold, the fracture mended. All that could be seen was a small bulge in the trunk. That tree is now about twenty feet tall and the scar is out of sight.
We learned to love the Hackberry trees, for they multiplied quite easily and are a good substitute for the lost Elms with their spreading umbrella. I liked to eat the tiny black fruits, which tasted like dates.
Alas, the Yellowwood trees were planted such a short time ago that they are still too small to be but a shadow of their future blooming beauty. Our one Ginkgo grows well, and I love to see the mass of golden yellow leaves drop in an instant, carpeting the ground beneath.
What we set out to do with our land, in planting this burgeoning forest of some 5,000 trees, was to improve both the health of the soil and the beauty of the landscape. We took spring vacations to work hard on planting, then again in the fall to water and ready the trees for the winter. Otherwise, we came home from work, ate a quick supper, and then labored outside until dark. This reminds me that my husband did most of the planting, and I did a lot of the mowing. Only too often he would put in a lot of small trees without marking them, and in the fading light, I would mow them down, or just avoid doing so! The ones that were near misses are very special to me.
In winter we pored over catalogues and ordered our work for the coming spring. We knew winter was over when neatly wrapped packages of young trees would begin to arrive. The last few years that I lived there on my own became too much for my eighty year old bones. My husband had developed Alzheimer’s disease and died after ten years with a fading mind. I bit the bullet and put the house on the market, thinking I would have plenty of time to adjust. To my surprise, but maybe because of all our work, the house and land sold very quickly.
I still get to see the area when I visit my neighbors and have been to a party in my former house. Otherwise, I live in Iowa City, ill at ease in built up area. But I have my memories of all the beautiful trees to sustain me.
We planted each tree by hand with the use of a tree spade. This useful tool has an offset handle attached to a wedge like spade: dig on slit, loosen the soil, dig a second one behind the first, slip the tree in, close the slit with a wiggle of the spade, and tamp the soil down well. And we were fortunate enough to have a smithy nearby in Kalona, who repaired many a broken tree spade.