When I first moved to this twenty-acre farm with my Utah-bred husband and three California-bred children thirty-three years ago, I could stand out on the front step and see, unimpeded by trees, almost the entire expanse of semiarid Cache Valley. To characterize the area around our 100-year-old house and the equally old granary then as "bald as a sheep fold" would not be much of an exaggeration. Coming from the relatively mild, always green, and often soggy East Coast, the environmental shock to me was extreme. Suffice it to say that II found myself weeping often for the rain and tall trees of my old home, the comfort of burgeoning gardens around me, the sound of birds other than Magpies.

But that was then and this is now – with thirty-three years of intensive cultivation intervening, some of it feverish and, alas, many times ill advised, Dragongoose Farm is far from bald.

Then and Now
I collected books and information then on how to garden when the only dependable water was irrigation via the local canal company and with soil so alkaline that certain plants I grew up with – azaleas, dogwood trees, and blue hydrangeas –  couldn't possibly survive without vast inoculations of water and iron, even if they could withstand  temperatures during the winter that dropped to minus thirty degrees and sometimes to minus forty, which they couldn't. I discovered that after much trial and error. Though with more adaptable plants, I was successful beyond my wildest dreams.

Now I collect books on pruning and cutting back, dividing and redistributing perennials, and what aggressive plants and trees to avoid (too late, of course, since I've already got them). This year, in fact, is a kind of watershed year, in that I've found a groundsman who's middle name is "Cutting Back." There he is, at right, Harold Perryman of Four Seasons Yard Care based in Weston, Idaho. He's working on an old lilac and honeysuckle border that was plagued with suckers, dead limbs, a choking vine called 'Bryony' (more about this in a later essay), and an invasion of seedling elms – some of them twenty feet tall.

Here, at left below, is part of that same border shown at right, now cleared out – the first time in many years that I could see past the lilacs and honeysuckle to the stream side of the Cub River beyond the hill. But let's stop here for a while and discuss that tree species too often in the form of concentrated brush cleared out by Harold – the Siberian Elm.

Siberian Elm (Ulmus  pumilla)
This is a tree for which I still feel great affection. For many years, our west-facing Siberian Elms were the only two of three trees on this property to give us shade and a roosting place for the Magpies. Because they grew so fast, and because they were oblivious of our harsh winters, and because (let's face it) they were dirt cheap, we now have them in our windbreak. We also have them on all sides of the house, in the flower beds, on the hills surrounding the place, in the pasture below, along the drives, and even in the alfalfa field (although, thank heavens, these last are cut down three times a season along with the alfalfa).

Only thirty-five of the one hundred and fifty zillion Siberian Elms of various ages growing vigorously on DragonGoose Farm were planted by yours truly.

Seen below at right, behind the branches of a young Purple Leaf Plum (Prunus cerasifera), is one of the farm's original elms, both of which now tower above the house. And yes, I have a great affection for them still  – if only there were some way to innoculate them all with a fail-proof birth control serum. This spring I glanced out the kitchen window during a sudden windstorm that blew up right around seed-shedding time and it looked as if we were in the middle of a blizzard. The seeds are small and flat, about the size of a dime, and all of them are embryonic elm trees. Shortly after that windstorm, I collected approximately three bushels of them just from the area surrounding our house, and made up my mind at that time that, next year for sure, I must cover my flower beds, my planting of creeping thyme among stepping stones, and other areas vulnerable to this type of seed invasion. I'll do it, I vowed, with fine netting during the height of this menace in order to avoid another hours-long, nearly impossible cleaning out of elm seedlings.

Now if I can just follow through on that vow.....

Perhaps some thoughtful breeder has by this time developed a seedless Siberian Elm. We have, in fact, four trees of Marshall's Seedless Ash, lovely specimens that turn a magnificent gold in the fall and give us no seedling woes. We have many of Utah's native Boxelders on the farm that are not seedless, but come in two sexes which slows the seed production down a bit. Moreover, the tree that sold us on this house, a beautifully shaped Boxelder growing behind the house that reached its 126th year in 2002, is a venerable – and seedless – male. Our Norway Maples have produced some seedings here and there, too, as has a "Cottonless Cottonwood" that suddenly began production out of the blue a couple of summers ago. But none of these can touch the Siberian Elm's productivity.

Thank heavens the elms do not have tire-puncturing thorns also, as do our Russian Olives.

Russian Olive (Elaegnus augustifolia)
The Russian Olive is a terrifically drought tolerant tree and has been used extensively throughout the midwest and in the Intermountain region and high deserts for use in windbreaks and soil eroision projects. We ordered and planted some fifty of these trees here, mainly as a windbreak in the apple orchard, but also along the drive to the equipment yard and singly here and there in three different shrub borders. They're a small tree, you see, maturing (it's said) at about 20 feet tall, and for a while there we were really smitten with them. The tree has long, narrow, silver-gray leaves and an interesting, shedding bark. Their gray-green foliage was striking among the darker lilacs and evergreens that flanked them in shrub borders, and were also striking in a long massive gray-green row. The small yellow flowers that filled the entire area with their penetrating fragrance in June were especially rewarding, a fragrance we all enjoyed. Even our youngest son, Jonathan, who suddenly developed asthma at age eleven and our oldest daughter, Ethalinda, who began to experience debilitating hayfever at about age thirteen. Could it have been the Russian Olives? Well, yes it could.

One of our older neighbors asked me one day what the Russian Olives were good for, and I hesitated before I answered him. "Well," I said, "they're rather pretty and they're drought tolerant, and...." I could go no further, because by then these extremely drought tolerant trees had grown to such impressive heights with the generous amounts of water we were supplying them, and we had planted them so close together ten years before, that they needed as much pruning in the spring as did the apple trees.

I'll draw a veil, at this point, over the death-dealing job of pruning trees that sported thorns as long as two and a half inches, and concentrate on the fact that we never did manage to get all the pruned olive tree limbs cleared out of the grass after we finished. Can you believe that these forgotten branches with their two and a half inch long thorns would puncture even a pickup tire? Please, do believe it. The tires on the Snapper, my riding lawn mower, hadn't a chance.

After patching numberless tires and applying antisceptic to numerous scratches and even punctures on arms and legs, and worrying about our now safely absent son and oldest daughter spending the whole of their visits with us cowering inside the house with their inhalers, we started a massive cleanup effort. Besides, Melanie had, by then, driven one of these thorns so far in the heel of one bare foot that she had to go to the Emergency Room for a tetanus shot.

The olives are gone now from both the orchard and along the drive to the equipment yard, though I keep discovering others that I'd impulsively planted two decades before and forgotten. Four Seasons Yard Care will have plenty of cutting back to do for the foreseeable future.

Planning Ahead

I know how difficult it is for a young couple, as we were in 1969, to step back when acquiring a bare and forbidding landscape in order to put some thought into what should go into the ground first. I realize that when there are almost no shade trees to ameliorate a harsh climate or (goodness knows!) the view around the house, that fast-growing trees are the first choice that comes to mind. And, indeed, if I had my life here on the farm to live over, I'd rush out and do pretty much the same impulsive buying that I did before.

Except I'd be a little more selective with those fast growing trees. I'd check a few more books on trees instead of simply tree catalogs. I'd research their proclivity to producing seeds and thorns....

Joan Katherine Shaw
October 2002

Additional pages on DragonGoose trees:

Fruit and Shade Trees: Cold Season Damage
Living with a Venerable Tree
Cold Country Apples
Apple List
 

Online sources for tree catalogs and online ordering:

Musser Forests, Inc.
Forest Farm Nursery
Rocky Meadow Orchard & Nursery
Sonoma Antique Apple Nursery
Cummins Nursery

Books on Choosing Trees:

Plant a Tree: Choosing, Planting, and Maintaining, Revised Edition, Weiner and Weiner (This book has step by step instructions on planting and diagrams)

The Complete Guide to Choosing Landscape Plants, Robert J. Dolezal (Dolezal covers the whole gamut of garden plants including woody plants and trees)

The Tree & Shrub Finder: Choosing the Best Plants for Your Yard, Robert Kourik  (Buying options in this one, descriptions of trees regarding uses -- privacy, shelter, kid friendliness -- and tree planting, care, and enjoyment)

The Garden Tree: An Illustrated Guide to Choosing, Planting and Caring for 500 Garden Trees, Alan Mitchell,  Anne Hyde, Allen J. Coombes (Lots of pictures, most in color)
 

Sites for Tree Lovers:

Coalition of United Green Partners

Tree Link

National Tree Trust

National Arbor Day Foundation
 

Link to browse for  books:

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