The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 169

iiium ii iHHy mpi 11 I nil "i'i'iiT'm I -Stolon "section -j, i ii, i nliyayi. iiiwi rmVVr 1 nn irees renewin I --Ifi 1 I wmmlmmmmmmmmmmmmmmt urn 1 1 city streets liillliliM: s4 fiiw aS'iA. and spraying so that upkeep, including cost, is cut down. If small fpwereing trees die for lack of care or other reasons, it costs much less to remove and repalce them, hardly comparable with century-bid elms, maples, and oaks. Container trees require additional care, that of watering.

They need ample moisture summer and winter, especially evergreens more commonly planted at shopping centers and malls. Unlike deciduous trees, which shed their leaves in, the fall, they retain their foliage. When wind is blowing hard and sun is shining bright leaves continue to transpire, often at a greater rate than in summer. 'i When soil is frozen solidly, moisture is not replaced. Therefore, seize warm periods of thaw to water, wtihout relying on snow and rain.

Otherwise, needles and leaves will brown and twigs may become seared. Of more recent development are the tall, slender, upright trees known as fastigiate. The dictionary defines fas-tigiate as "narrowing toward the top," but the horticultural meaning is "erect and columnary." Whatever the definitions, they have many uses. Obviously they take little space as they grow the Lombardy poplar, susceptible, to a canker disease so that it is no longer recommended. Many of our most common shade and flowering trees are available in fastigiate forms.

These include Columnar Norway maple, perhaps the most widely planted; pyramidal beech and linden, gingko, sentry sugar maple, European hornbeam, English oak, hardy in the warmer regions of New England; columnar Sargent cherry, upright goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria) "for July bloom, and white Siberian and pink Strathmore crabapples. By George Taloumis Street trees! Most of us give them little thought, yet we ought to. Our forefathers did, hence our once elm and maple-shaded byways, though diseases, droughts, and pollution have taken enormous toll. Even so, there is no need to give up. Actually we haven't, as evidenced by trends: trees tolerant to impure air, resistant to diseases and pests, and smaller in size so moisture intake is lessened.

And there are those that flower, an European tradition transplanted here, such as flowering, dogwoods, Kwanzan and other cherries, hawthorns, redbuds, Idaho locusts, and mountain ashes with colorful fruit clusters in late summer. Another trend is still more innovative: trees in large planters along city and suburban streets. These add an architectural dimension, summer and winter. Though these are chiefly flowering kinds, evergreens such as yews, spruces, pines, and hollies are, selected for their winter green. Street trees have suffered damage from other factors, so planting them in containers is a happy solution.

Salted sand injures roots, resulting in brown and desiccated leaves' in June, a sorrowful sight when summer is at its threshold. There has been increased vandalism. Newly planted trees have been snapped at the base and their branches broken. Stakes have been cracked or removed. Tree-wrap around trunks to help prevent sunscald in winter has been unravelled, and not the least, automobiles and snow plows have plunged into them unmercifully.

Still, interest in street trees in residential and industrial areas is on the increase. Once park departments planted them and looked after them. Now business and garden clubs have embarked on tree planting and maintenance projects. In many instances home owners buy, plant, and care for trees in front of their properties, with permission of civic officials. Results have been encouraging.

When it comes to selecting shade trees, the noble American elm is no longer a candidate. A new fungicide cure' (Lignasan BLP) seems to have promise, but only time will tell. Sugar' maple, the glory of New England's country roads and lanes, is extremely susceptible to salt injury, and to leaf scorch when moisture is insufficient. Some, however, do qualify. American ash is one.

Tops is Norway Maple, scoffing just about all ills, and for that reason perhaps overplanted. London plane, with large maple-like leaves, is excellent under city conditions, and so has been widely planted in Boston and its city suburbs. Moraine locust, qualifying as a sub-sititute for the American elm, is now common in small cities and towns, along with European linden, long one of the best. It has the unfortunate habit of suckering freely at the base. To reveal the trunk, these need to be re-moved periodically.

The most notable, tendency has been toward ornamental flowering street trees. Attractive in bloom, many like crabapples and Washington thorns sport colorful berries in the fall. Mostly they do not grow too large. Consequently their water absorption i is less. Their branches do not become entangled in overhead electrical and telephone wires, and pruning is minimized.

The latter applies to feeding I lout' I f'f't' 4f Moraine locust is becoming one of most Double pink Kwanzan cherry adds t4y wawwasms wife color Garden genius David Burpee, 83, still crusades for marigold popular street trees. to residential street. ''David Burpee is a direct link with the history of American gardening," says Rachel Snyder, editor of Flower and Garden magazine. "He's been there almost from the beginning. Al-.

though some universities have turned out giants of horticulture, their work doesn't always boil down to -the people. Burpee brought his innovations to the people and made it all available for a quarter a packet." Burpee, who looks somewhat like the late Harry S. Truman, is more lively and alert than most people 20 years his junior. Although he was recovering from pneumonia, he smoked four cigars during a recent interview. Burpee lives with his wife, Lois, in" a 300-year-old farmhouse on the original trial-seed growing farm.

He met Mrs. Burpee in 1936 at a flower show in Baltimore. Their son, Jonathan, now heads Burpee's customer service department. Since David Burpee sold the company to General Foods six years ago, he has stayed with Burpee's as a consultant. His only regret, he says, was selling "before the great gardening boom started." He spends much of his time helping' pick new plants, vegetables and flowers and he still attends flower shows where, inevitably, he becomes the center of attention.

And he still writes his folksy, "Dear Fellow Gardeners" letter every spring to the 5.5 million people who receive the Burpee catalog. Burpee, sniffing a cluster of white marigolds in his greenhouse at Ford-hook Farms, recalls that last year he presented a $10,000 check to the first gardener to send him seed that grew a white marigold. "We did most of the work," he confides. On his search for the white marigold, Burpee says: "The idea to create a white marigold first occurred to me in 1919. We started our work in 1920.

1 thought it might help if we offered $10,000 to any gardener who would send seed that would grow a white marigold two and a half inches or more across. But then I thought, no, that would not be right because it may not be possible to produce a white marigold. And I didn't want to lead the gardeners of America on a wild goose chase. "We made such good progress from 1920 to 1954 that I made the offer of $10,000 at that time. The public responded with great enthusiasm.

The offer was continued up until 1975. Some of the more than 8000 samples we received showed improvements toward the white and to each of these people we paid $100. In 1974, six entries were almost identical and were so good the judges could not decide which of the six was the winner. So Arborvitae in planter, green all year-round, brightens an otherwise drab city street. Iowa, and Riverside, California.

Mil-' lions more packets are sold through the stores on Burpee racks. A recent innovation has been the seed-starting kits for the beginning gardener. 4 Bulk seed vegetable sales are made to farmers and commercial growers' and bulk flower seed sales are made to nurseries and florists, foreign sales are coordinated by Burpee's export divU sion. "I've often wondered if any other business was as complicated as Burpee seeds," Burpee says. "At one time I thought perhaps the pharmaceutical business was just as complicated.

But now I'm convinced it is not. They deal with inorganic matter. And much of it they can just buy. We deal with organic matter. Seeds are alive.

They are subject to variation. There's an old saying, 'There are no two blades of grass "To improve seeds, we have to constantly select. I think the most famous thing my cousin Luther Burbank ever said was, 'Selection is the beginning and end of plant Up until the end of the 1930s that was the only method we used to improve plant varieties; We'd carefully select the plants with the good traits we wanted, and cull put and discard the mavericks." Burpee was a pioneer in hybridizing crossing two strains of the same or different species to create a new flower or vegetable. Burpee's geneticists have used other methods to create new plants. They have used X-rays to alter the genes of seeds.

They have made extensive use of the drug colchicine which doubles the chromosome number in plants and changes its characteristics. Colchicine produces stronger stems, darker green foliage, richer colors. Among the flowers made possible by the drug are giant marigolds and snapdragons. A common wildflower, Black-Eyed Susan, was transformed into spectacular Gloriosa daisies with the help of colchicine. Most Burpee seeds are produced in California where the company has two farms: Floradale at Lompoc (established 19C9) and Santa Paula (established 1944).

"Friends in Pennsylvania often ask me if seeds grown in California are good back here," Burpee says. "My answer is yes because the seed grown in California is stronger. It actually weighs more than seed grown in the East or Midwest. The California climate gives us perfect weather for harvesting a tuuy maturea seetr. "Here in the East, we're apt to nave a late frert in the spring, then a very' hot sci' tND middle of the summer end an c-rly frost in the fall followed by Indisi siirr'ner which doesn't do us any good because the plants are dead." By Steve Neal Knight News Service When the old man talks about his seeds, he quotes an old proverb: "If you want to be happy for an hour, get drunk.

If you want to be happy, for a weekend, get married. If you want to be happy for a whole week, kill your pig and eat it. But if you want to be happy all your life, become a gardener." The old man is David W. Burpee, 83, the dean of American gardeners. For 55 years he ruled the world's largest seed business, the W.

Atlee Burpee Company. During that time he developed hundreds of varieties of flowers and vegetables including giant marigolds, double petunias and hybrid tomatoes. I The marigold was, and still is, his favorite. He spent decades developing it, and got rid of its turpentine smell when a missionary sent him an ounce or Tibetan marigold seeds that had no odor. Through hybridization, he created some of the most colorful and glamorous marigolds grown anywhere.

One of his goals has been to make the marigold the national flower. He began his crusade in 1959 and received strong support from the late Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois. "The marigold," he says, "is not the floral emblem of any of the states or nations, but is a flower of all the people." David Burpee's father, W. Atlee Burpee, opened a small seed shop behind Philadelphia's historic Christ Church in 1876.

"My father had entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School against his will," Burpee recalls. "But after two years there he had developed enough courage to rebel he quit medicine. His father and grandfather who were famous doctors, were so mad they wouldn't speak to him. But his mother loaned him $1000 and with that he started a little store." In 1888 the elder Burpee acquired the 500-acre Fordhook Farms estate near Doylestown, making it the Burpee family residence as well as the experimental growing center. Soon, he was developing such popular vegetables as Iceberg Lettuce, Golden Bantam Sweet Corn, and Golden Self-Blanching Celery.

"By the time father was 35 he had built up the largest mail order seed business in the world," Bur- pee says. Since they began, the Burpees have sold more than six billion packets of seeds and have hsd more impact on American gardens than anyone since Johnny AppleseecJ, "ur- back up their slogan reeds Grow." If customers ar? not U'ied with their flowers or vegetables, they get thr money back. to ailing wafttfrw a nti, 4Vvt ft wt David Burpee studies lovely white announcement was made that they would be retested a year later and one of the six (grown by Alice Vonk of Sully, Iowa) was chosen the best. The research and trials cost Burpee's more than $250,000. But now Burpee's is offering the white marigold for only 50 cents a packet.

"They're calling these 'Burpee's Best I'm going to have to talk with them about that," he says. "They should be called 'Burpee's First Whites' because they are going to get better." Settling down on a couch in the living room of the farmhouse, David Burpee begins discussing his early work. "My active interest started way back in 1901 when I was eight years old," he says. "That was when my father started to take my brother and me to Europe every summer to inspect seed crops over there." When his father died in 1915, David Burpee took charge of the family business. "Fortunately I had a great deal of experience in the horticultural end of the business," he says.

"But then business management was entirely new to me. A major crisis struck shortly afterward which threatened the fuLre of marigold, found after long quest. the seed company. "The sweet pea had been the most popular flower grown from seed for many years. Then just about the time of my father's death, the sweet pea developed a fungus root rot.

That disease gradually spread all over the United States where summers were hot. So the demand for sweet peas fell off increasingly year after year." Meanwhile, Burpee was spending almost every weekend and evening ex- amining all class of flowers in the testing grounds at Fordhook. "In the summer of 1919 I came to the conclusion that the marigold was the best flower to develop. It had plenty of faults late blooming, scrawny, limited color range, and it had an odor in the foliage-that some people didn't like. But underneath I saw a garden Cinderella." After decades of developing the marigold, he began his crusade to make it the national flower in 1959.

David Burpee is a distant cousin of Luther Burbank, the noted horticulturist. Burbank, who used such techniques as cross-breeding, hybridization, and grafting to develop stoneless prunes, thornless blackberries and spineless cactus, was one "of the Burpee Comp'any's earliest customers. When Burbank died in 926, Burpee acquired the rights to the famous scientist's unfinished flower and vegetable experiments. Most of the Burbank seeds were stored in a battered old trunk which Burpee called "the Luther Burbank Treasure Chest." The Burbank trunk yielded no great discoveries no exotic new or gourmet vegetable. Indeed, the most Burpee could get out of his cousin's work was some pastel shades for a giant zinnia which was named, not for Burbank, the David Burpee zinnia.

Burpee often named new flowers lor well-known Americans Helen Hayes, Kate Smith, Pearl Buck, Mamie Eisenhower and Mrs. Douglas Mac-Arthur. He attempted to name a ir.ari-. gold after Lady Bird Johnson, who invited him to the White House, but Mrs. Johnson declined.

Undaunted, Burpee named the flower "First Lady." Over the years, Burpee's customers have included the Duke of Windsor, King Farouk, Madame Chiang Kai-shek and General George C. Marshtil. The great bulk of Eurpee's pi still handled thrcu-j'i tha mail. Serrs four million catalog; arc gardeners every wiriter. Some 21 million packets of seeds are handled from the three mail-order centers: Warminster in Bucks Clinton,.