The Trees in Our Yard

If someone were to ask me what my favorite tree is, I wouldn’t be able to answer.  It would be like choosing my favorite child.  Every tree species has its own special qualities, and no one is better than another is.  Take the 17 tree species that grow in our yard.

When we moved here 37 years ago, we had less species.  In our front yard, black locusts shaded our front porch.  Black walnut trees dominated the side yards and back yard.  Several red maple trees grew along the driveway between the barn and guesthouse. Two seckel pear trees, one at the curve above the barn and the other below the garage, yielded many sweet little pears.  Across from the lower seckel pear tree was a wild apple tree.  All of those species have survived, in one form or another, and been joined by many that we planted over the years.

The black walnut trees have not only survived but thrived, taking over whole areas in our yard and moving out into First Field.  During our homesteading years, when our three sons were young, we harvested the black walnuts.  The boys would gather them in their green husks in a wheelbarrow and dump them on the flat area of our driveway below the guesthouse.  That way, every car that drove over them would partially husk them.  The boys, their hands in rubber gloves, would finish the job.  But no matter how careful they were, they always ended up with black nut stains on their hands.  This led to several weeks of taunts from schoolmates that I’ll leave to your imagination.

After the walnuts were husked, the boys put them in baskets and carried them up to our attic where they laid them out to dry.  Over the fall, winter, and spring, I would take dozens down to our back steps, crack them open with a hammer, and dig out the meat.  After much probing and picking, I would have enough to use in cookies or cakes.

Despite liking the taste of black walnuts, I decided, after several years, to let them remain on the ground where they fell as food for our gray and fox squirrels. That’s when I began to notice that if the black walnut crop was bountiful, we had little or no trouble during the winter with squirrels at our bird feeders.  Even in spring, they busily harvested those that remained on the lawn.

Not only do black walnuts provide food for the squirrels, they are ideal trees for birdwatching because they are the last to leaf out in the spring and the first to lose their leaves in the fall. By mid-August, I’m already sweeping golden walnut leaves off the front porch and veranda.

We also marvel at how quickly the nuts develop and begin dropping on the porch roof.  Only a month after leaf out we hear the first thump of an immature walnut, and two months later every breeze sends mature ones cascading to the ground.

We think that the previous owners must have planted the trees because the only black walnuts in our woods have spread from our yard.  And black walnuts like deep, bottomland, limestone-rich soil, not the stony soil of our mountain, which may be why they grow slowly here and quickly under suitable conditions. Not ideal yard trees, the experts say.

Neither, we discovered, are black locust trees. Surely, no one would plant those fast-growing, brittle trees overhanging their home. They leaf out even later than the black walnuts, but hold onto their leaves until late fall.

On the other hand, maybe previous owners did plant them. Their dangling white flowers are beautifully fragrant and attract honeybees that make prize locust honey. Their seeds also feed squirrels and their hard wood makes excellent fence posts.

In fact, the previous owners seemed to specialize in inappropriate yard trees.  One tree species here — the balm-of-Gilead — overhung both our home and the guesthouse.  They too grew fast, like the black locusts, but unlike the locusts, their wood was light.  Believed now to be a hybrid of balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) and eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), it was first introduced back in 1900 and became a popular cultivated tree.  That’s probably when ours were planted, because by the 1970s, their trunks were immense.  Eventually, my husband Bruce, with the help of his tractor and chainsaw, had to remove the one overhanging the guesthouse and another overhanging our son Mark’s bedroom because they were dying.  Others, in the backyard, survived longer, and only last year Bruce and our sons Steve and Dave assisted him in removing one of the last, dying trees.

Another unfortunate choice of the former owners was the Lombardy poplars that grew up one side of the driveway.  A favorite of European estates, this narrow, erect tree, known as the cultivar “Italica,” came from near Lombardy, Italy, hence its name. Cultivated in Europe since the early 1700s, the ones planted here died one by one and were gone in ten years.

The seckel pear trees gradually declined and died but Jack Winieski, the consulting forester for our forest stewardship plan, took cuttings and returned several years later with a sapling that Dave planted along our driveway.  Every year it grows a little taller.

Another gift was supposed to be several redbud tree saplings.  At least that was what George Beatty, a now-deceased botanist, told me when he gave them to me.  We planted them below the front porch and, like all our tree plantings; they took several years to grow into reasonable trees.

At some point, it dawned on me that either Beatty had made a mistake or had purposely presented me with a less glamorous tree than the redbud.  The leaves were not heart-shaped and the flowers were green not lavender.  I referred to my tree books and discovered we had hackberries instead. Hackberry, also known as sugarberry, has fruit that is important for birds during the winter so I’ve gotten over my disappointment that those trees are not redbud. Besides, their leaves provide larval food for several showy butterfly species including question marks, red-spotted purples, and mourning cloaks, all of which we have in abundance, as well as hackberry emperors and tawny emperors, which I’m hoping to see.

With so many short-lived trees in our yard, our son Dave began digging up longer-lived trees in our forest and planting them underneath the remaining black locust trees and in gaps caused by the death of the balm-of-Gileads and the black locusts closest to the front porch that had died and fallen.  A white pine flanks the tallest hackberry and a scarlet oak the shortest one.  The scarlet oak shot up and is already adding welcome color to our yard in the autumn.  Dave planted a second scarlet oak in the side yard facing Laurel Ridge, which is also thriving. But then scarlet oaks thrive on dry upper slopes and ridges.

That same side yard also holds two white ashes that are good-sized trees, even though both lost several branches during an ice storm.  Dave had planted them even earlier than he had planted those in the front yard and they provide landing places for the birds at our feeders. Their seeds, which often persist through the winter, supply welcome food for purple finches, pine grosbeaks, and fox squirrels.

Dave’s also planted tulip trees in the side yard and fenced a few in the front yard that have seeded from the enormous tulip tree at the edge of the woods.  These are favorite trees of mine, especially their large, tulip-shaped, yellow-green flowers blotched with orange. Cardinals, purple finches, black-capped chickadees and squirrels feed on their seeds during the winter.  Lately, Dave’s planted a chestnut oak near the hackberries.  Also known as rock oak, it is the most common tree species on dry, rocky slopes and ridges and its acorns, which mature in one season, are a favorite food of squirrels, wild turkeys, and deer.

Of course, Dave’s had to fence every tree he’s planted so each one is enclosed by woven wire until it gets above deer height.  Especially in winter, those fences detract from the beauty of our home grounds, but they are necessary.

Years ago, two eastern cedar trees seeded in the powerline right-of-way.  Bruce dug them up and planted one in front of the old corncrib and the other close to the side of our house.  The one in front of the corncrib struggled for years to amount to something and finally died.  But the one at the side of the house struggled and survived.  Every ice storm bent it over and Bruce would go outside and knock the ice off it.  Sometimes it would take months for it to straighten out again, but it always has.  Now it reaches above our second story window and gives needed cover to birds at our feeders and juncos through the winter nights.  Once song sparrows and now cardinals and robins nest in it.

When we were young and poor, we paid an extra dollar for a flowering crabapple tree as part of our vegetable seed order from a seed company.  What looked like a five-inch-tall dead stick arrived in the mail.  We planted it beside the springhouse and waited and waited and waited.  Year after year, that sapling struggled to be something.  After twenty years, we had a stunning tree covered with deep rose blossoms and buzzing with bees every spring. My only regret is that we didn’t pay a few more dollars for a few more trees.

The red maples have been looking poorly recently, but a wild black cherry sapling has grown into a respectable tree nearby and black walnuts have also sprouted from squirrel-buried nuts and grown up to take the place of the maples.  Black walnuts are known to produce the chemical compound juglone in their leaves, nut hulls, buds, stems, fruits and roots that inhibit the growth of some plants, but red maples are not on the lists I’ve consulted. And happily, tulip trees, which Dave planted beneath the black walnuts, are also not affected by juglone.

A red oak has sprouted from a misplaced acorn in the side yard facing Laurel Ridge in what used to be a Concord grape arbor when we moved in.  But once our last dog died and the deer foraged near our home with impunity, those vines became deer food.

I’ve been using the term “yard” loosely.  We haven’t mowed our front yard or the side yard facing Laurel Ridge for years.  Both are either steep slopes or wetlands or both. We mow our back yard and the side yard facing First Field three times a year, enough so that we can walk into the house and hang up our laundry outside without getting our feet wet.

What was once a tailored landscape looks more and more natural every year.  The many trees give us needed shade in the summer and an open vista in winter.  Without the trees in our yard, providing ample food and shelter throughout the year, we would not have as many close encounters with birds and mammals.

All photos by Dave Bonta