C'mon In, The Shade's Fine

Image Gallery

LAST LAUGH

In search of the perfect tree.

By Ron Beathard

C'MON IN, THE SHADE'S FINE

I do not hold designer trees — Bradford pear, weeping cherry, crabapple, and the like — much in favor. They are nice, pretty to look at, but their shade is fleeting and you cannot rest your shoulders against their trunks.

I prefer trees that were planted before I was born — trees that I can lie beneath the live long summer day and not once be touched by the sun.

My friends return from vacations boasting of even tans, sunny beaches, and cloudless cruises. I return and would tell (if anyone would listen) of anonymous trees in whose shade I rested and pondered as lazy as a leaf

on a windless day "Disneyland was nice, but there was this live oak just outside my motel room and..." or "In London I saw this double row of magnificent horse chestnut trees near one of those palaces or something." I have a vacation goal: there is a saman tree on the campus of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad whose shade covers an area of more than half an acre!

Good shade trees are hard to find. Tidy gardeners do not like them. Large, leafy trees are usually dropping something unpleasant — twigs and insect pests, nuisance fruits, pods and seeds and sticky things — and they have to rake them up. (Autumn leaf disposal, a line item in the budgets of many cities, also discourages shade tree growers.)

Good shade trees interfere with overhead utility lines, cause concrete walks to bend and heave, and seek out water lines like divining sticks. When one is cut down, its massive underground trunk and root structure decays, slowly leaving a growing depression in an otherwise level lawn.

Good shade trees take decades to grow full-headed canopies, and most landscape designers plant for next season's garden club competition, not for the next generation's shade.

Good shade trees frighten insurance companies.

It is no wonder the dogwood is chosen over the oak, the redbud over the beech.

The requirements for a good shade tree are stringent.

These trees give shade but will not tolerate it. The best ones grow at the edges of forests or in the middle of meadows where farmers appreciate majesty over productive land (and a week's worth of tree clearing).

The trunk should not be so straight as to stiffen the neck when leaning against it. The roots should not be knobby and lumpy but should fit comfortably — as an Eames chair. The leaves should not be so dense as to preclude some ground covering. (Cathedral pines make fine shade, but cones and needles do not a bed of roses make.)