Insight: Oak Trees by Billy Gregg
It is hard to grow big deciduous trees west of the 100th meridian. In the semi-arid west early snow and late snow combine with dry wind to give us shade trees that look more or less like their eastern relations…
It is hard to grow big deciduous trees west of the 100th meridian. In the semi-arid west early snow and late snow combine with dry wind to give us shade trees that look more or less like their eastern relations but, if you put them side by side, our trees appear to be stunted. Imagine how we could use our, Western 5/8 scale trees and full size, Mississippi Valley trees to achieve forced perspective similar to what the architecture provides at Main Street in Disneyland.
I mention this because, in this difficult climate, the value of a shade tree canopy grows in inverse proportion to our ability to obtain cultivate it. We look for way to compensate:
- Oaks love to be planted close together in clusters and the resulting canopy has something of the feel of a big shade tree.
- Honeylocust can also be grown this way
- or as multi-stem trees that also have the effect of broadening the canopy.
