Last autumn I lost a tree. It was not a pretty tree, or a shapely tree; it did not spread gracefully to provide much needed shade. It never held a nest of robins in its hair, although blue plastic bags were strangely attracted to its upper branches, where they lived happily for months on end. Some years it was infested with bag worms, too high for me to spray, even if I had noticed them early enough that spraying would do some good. Most years the leaves turned crisp and brown by the end of summer, so it never had brilliant autumn foliage or even much foliage at all by September. In the past five years ever larger parts of the tree failed to leaf out, and the dying limbs and general appearance of arboreal malaise prompted the occasional passer-by to ask “What’s wrong with your tree?” I took to darting through the gate to the back yard whenever I spotted a pedestrian heading down my street, only exempting joggers who wisely kept their heads down and their feet moving as they zipped past my house. But for all its faults, it was a tree, growing in West Texas, and it was my tree.When the arborist came, he told me in his kindest and most professional manner that my tree had been planted too close to the house, too near to the walkway, and too deep to thrive. And, he said most solemnly, this was not a tree for West Texas. So, with great dispatch and efficiency, my tree was gone, and all that remained were a few corky twigs and a litter of last spring’s gum balls, one of which I saved to remind me of my folly, for I had planted that tree. I brought it home in the back seat of my car seventeen years ago, in the springtime when it was only a slender whip in a five gallon pot, showing, as I recall, three or four softly unfurling star-shaped leaves and the merest hint of a furrowed trunk.
It was the first tree in what was to become my front garden, and it was meant to replace a large oak which had died before I bought the house, and whose only trace was a decaying stump in the middle of the yard. After careful consideration, I planted my tree close to the house, which I hoped it would shade, and near to the walkway, so I could admire it each morning when I left for work and each evening when I returned home. And I planted it as deep as I could dig a hole because I thought it would make for a healthier root system and a sturdier trunk. But worst of all, I chose this tree to be mine because far away in a part of the country where I spent my younger days, this was a tree that flourished, growing in private gardens, in parks and public spaces, in groves and as solitary sentinels. This tree matured into an elegant pyramidal shape; the dew and fog and rain sparkled on its leaves like silver teardrops, and in the autumn its vivid crimson and orange and scarlet foliage reflected on the water and lingered well into early spring before blanketing the ground with a Persian carpet of color. In short, this was the tree of my youth. I knew nothing of gardening then; certainly not that this was a tree for a gentle climate of fertile acid soil, regular rainfall, morning mists, and soft breezes. Of course the tree I had planted developed chlorosis because it hated alkaline soil, wanted more water than the xeric plantings which surrounded it, shriveled and became brittle in the dry air and finally succumbed to the high winds of a late summer storm.
It should be a cardinal rule of gardening that the needs of the plant must come before the desires of the gardener, so I have spent the winter reading about trees and talking to experts, and as I spend time in the gardens of friends, or wander through the Arboretum, I see trees from a different perspective. My tree is gone, but hopefully with the wisdom of age and the advice of my arborist, I will choose as a replacement the tree of my maturity, and if I am successful, I will have a tree which will grow strong and healthy, spreading its branches wide, and with its roots firmly anchored in the West Texas soil.