Close to the southern border of Massachusetts, in the foothills of the Berkshires, there is a house whose dining-room window overlooks a broad field which ends in an irregular palisade of white birch trunks against the darkness of a pine forest. Midway is a clump of mountain laurel flanked by tall, red-stemmed blueberries. Other native shrubs come gradually into view as the roaming eye spots an unobtrusive chokeberry, azalea or viburnum, or a pagoda dogwood of symmetrical form. In midsummer, a gleam of yellow here and orange there reveals meadow and wood lilies in bloom. Later a fragrant mass of milkweed attracts a hovering cloud of spotted butterflies.
A Vista up the Hill
Across the road, in a field which stretches several hundred feet up a hillside, the dominant notes in the waning Summer scene are the goldenrods of many kinds, which cover a long season, patches of pearly everlasting, an occasional bull thistle left for its spectacular bloom, and just enough Queen Anne’s lace to make each plant stand out as though regally aware of its delicate beauty.
Long after neighboring fields have been reduced to stubble, the wind moves over these uncut acres as across a rippling sea.
After the redtop has browned and toppled in the Fall, a single clump of bronze-red andropogon stands erect against the shining green of the laurel. Escaped apple trees along one border of the forest encourage the deer to come into the open to eat their fruit and their twigs.
A Jungle of Underbrush
Five years ago, the only view from the window was a jungle of underbrush and weed trees beyond the immediate lawn. The hill across the road was half hidden by the woody growth which had characteristically appeared where hay had once been cut.
Until 1926, the place was a typical New England farm. In that year, the growing of crops was abandoned. Fields which were once in corn became covered with weeds and then with grass – mostly redtop and sweet vernal, with a scattering of timothy and orchard grass. They were mown for hay for a number of years, but the grasses soon thinned out and woody plants became more evident. After that, only some of the fields were mown for the sake of keeping the shrubs and trees cut down. By 1945 there was little to cut except increasingly-numerous woody shoots. Unmown acres at once shot up to tall dense brush, interspersed with birch, poplar, red oak, beech, white ash, black cherry, red and sugar maples, pine and hemlock.
Late in 1945, when the war was over, the place was taken over by a man who wanted it, not as a farm, but as a place to enjoy for the beauty that the New England countryside offers. He soon found that he would have to carve his own views out of the jungle that had grown up with the years of neglect.
Anyone who has ever cut down a tree knows that within a couple of years there will be six trunks where only one grew before, and that for every one of these that is cut, the number will again increase geometrically. To clear out his vistas by old-fashioned methods of cutting looked like a never-ending job. And to use the equally old-fashioned method of killing the plants with arsenate meant the risk of poisoning the wildlife.
Starting the Job Experimentally
Practical use of the non-poisonous, hormone-like chemical sprays to eradicate weeds was then barely two years old, and so far as published reports were concerned, such things as 2, 4-D, to which grasses are resistant, had been used only on herbaceous plants. Experiments with woody plants were just beginning, and some of the early studies were carried out on this Berkshire foothills place. Here, as at research sites throughout the country, each year since has seen new chemicals and methods in use and has brought forth new successes. At first the work was pure experiment; no one could predict the result. Today, five years later, it can be said with assurance that it is feasible to landscape one’s grounds by means of chemicals.
Selective Spot-spraying
An over-all spraying, it was recognized from the first, would eliminate low ground covers and other useful, ornamental plants as well as the unwanted ones. Selective spot-spraying, therefore, has been carried out from the start on the former Berkshire farm, even when the growth of woody plants was dense. Among the willows and alders that choked the area, there was almost certain to be an occasional azalea, viburnum or shadblow that was worth saving. Sometimes, where a broad expanse of waving grass was wanted, even these precious shrubs were looked upon as weeds, and were sprayed along with the sumacs, the red maples and the birches. But wherever the handsomer of the flowering shrubs could be fitted into the desired landscape, they have been left, in place and featured in the scene.
Using Herbicides on Trees
Cutting down a tree or clearing away underbrush creates a new view instantly, and brings a sense of great accomplishment. But when using herbicides on the basal bark of woody plants, one does not get immediate results, for the plants must be left standing for a season. It takes a long time for the chemicals to act on the branches, and still longer for them to affect the roots. Meanwhile, one can only surmise what the view will be when the growth is finally down. But once it is gone, unlike the trees and shrubs that have been merely felled and dragged away, it is gone for good. Five years of observation at this one place reveal very little re-invasion by seedlings. What few pines and ash trees have reappeared can, for landscape purposes, be easily removed by spraying in their juvenile stages.
Landscaping by Elimination
The aim of this system of naturalistic landscaping by elimination has been to etch out from the jungle of brush a desired pattern composed of plants that were already growing on the place, developing the best of them while eradicating the others. The conversion from one type of plant cover to another demands complete root kill for each specimen being removed. Cutting does not accomplish this; foliage spraying does, but only after repeated treatments. The method now adopted at the Berkshire place consists almost entirely of spraying the basal bark of a tree or shrub in Winter with an oil mixture of 2, 4-D and 2, 4, 5-T – more than 10 times as strong as that customarily used on foliage.
There have been some herbaceous weeds to deal with too; and here again the ones in most picturesque locations have been left, while the others have been eradicated with chemicals. The toughest, such as milkweed, dogbane, loosestrife and live-forever, require almost as drastic treatment as woody plants. Of these, only a few clumps of milkweed have been left to perfume the fields in late Summer.
Herbaceous Plants for Color
Less rampant growers which have been left to make their own way among the grasses give color to the scene from month to month. Bluets are the first to appear in May accompanied and followed by occasional strawberry blossoms and by violets along the edges near the trees. The greatest single flush of color comes in late May from the potentilla flowers, their brilliant yellow diffused by the grasses which rise over them. These are followed by a sprinkling of buttercups, then daisies, and later by the black-eyed susans. None of these wild flowers, which are common weeds on farms, grow in the uncut fields as prolifically as on lands where the grass is mown.
From late July through August, there is a succession of goldenrods, some of them scattered through the fields, some left in compact border colonies, others in tall fountain-like clumps, each according to its species. Where they have added to the picture, they have been left in. Where they would serve as weeds, they have been sprayed out. September’s asters have been treated in the same fashion; In some instances these vigorous-growing natives have been expressly kept to prevent the possible invasion of nearby aggressors.
Sometimes, when woody weeds have been removed, even weedier species have come in to take their places. Blackberries have been a particular problem, for they not only invaded, but they were resistant to 2, 4-D. It was not until 2, 4, 5-T came on the market, in 1949, as an herbicidal spray that brambles of any kind were kept under control. To get the plant-cover wanted, the Berkshire owner has had to keep constant watch until the desired plants showed signs of becoming established. But this has not been difficult.
When Grasses Creep In
When grasses came in – as they are likely to do on any place – they were left uncut. They formed such a dense natural mulch in two or three years, that little else apparently could get started. In the Fall they matted down, and smothered the Winter rosettes of many perennials that had persisted from the days of mowing. When tree seeds and others were wafted to the grassland, they could only lie on top of the impenetrable carpet. They were apparently soon picked up by birds or mice; or, if exposed for long, they probably lost their viability. When they did succeed in sifting through to the earth, they had a struggle against the fibrous roots of the grasses, which are known for their power to absorb more nutrients from the soil than other types of roots. Some recent experiments in Pennsylvania indicate also that grasses give off in the soil a toxic substance which is inimical to the growth of other plants.
This well-established grassland, therefore, perhaps conditioned by the use of herbicides, has become a highly stable community, in contradiction to the view of many botanists, who look upon a grassland as a short-lived early stage of development which will soon progress to forest. Through the use of herbicides, for the first time in history, individual plants may be removed from their community with no disturbance to the soil or to other plants around them.
A Park-like Shrub-land
In another section of these landscaped acres, one of the former fields which had grown up to heavy brush has been scenically converted to an informal, park-like shrub-land. Here are featured handsome azaleas and other native woody plants brought into view for the first time by chemical eradication of the weedy shrubs that had all but smothered them. Through November, the red of winterberry flashes from the low, moist borders of the field; in very early Spring pussy willows spot the field with the silvery sheen of their buds.
Because of the stability of the plant covers, the maintenance of the grass and shrub-lands and their shrubby borders has been almost negligible. This is the result, in part, of a thorough job of conversion, in which every unwanted plant has been completely killed to the roots. An occasional inspection – which has been part of the pleasure of having natural-looking fields that one has created by skillful management of them as plant communities – has served to show what still needs to be sprayed and what needs to be encouraged.
