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Plan of Evanston
prepared landscape plans under the direction of Mr. Cone. For these parks the City will need a great deal of shrubbery and many trees. The City could make a saving on the purchase of these if we owned our own nursery.
This Committee would like to see a tree expert appointed by the City Park Superintendent whose principal duty would be to look after trees and shrubs. He should have supervision of private as well as public horticulture in the same way that the public health commissioner now has supervision over general health. It is important to prevent the spreading of disease among trees just as it is among people. When a man's trees are sick he should be compelled to take proper precaution for their care. Nobody should be permitted to cut down a tree in his parkway, or in his own yard for that matter, without a permit from the City Tree Warden. Concord, Mass., has such a tree warden, and drastic legislation has been in force for centuries in the old countries of Europe.
How many times have you watched some ignorant contractor strip an entire lot of fine old trees simply to build an apartment house on say one-third or one-half of the lot. When the new building is completed, the owner of this lot, at a great expense, plants a few small trees, which may take forty years to reach the splendor and dignity of some of the old trees he might have saved.
What is more charming than the veranda or porch built around some stately tree, yet how seldom do you see it done?
You may say to yourself that the City has no right to supervise the trees on a man's property; he can do what he likes with his own. This we think is not right. If one man wantonly destroys the trees on his ground, he is doing an injury to his neighbor and to the entire community.
We feel that it is entirely within the province of the City to supervise a man's trees just as much as it is to look after the health of the same man's neighbors by making him comply with the City sanitary requirements.
