Roadside Planting
and the
Care of Trees and Shrubs Along Highways*
IHE fact that many organizations aside front state, county and township highway departments are taking great interest in roadside
_____ planting makes it advisable for these departments to adopt certain
standards of procedure to govern this work. Property owners, improvement associations, garden clubs, women’s clubs, and other bodies are interested in making our highways more attractive as well as utilitarian and their work should be coordinated. Highway departments should have authority to compel conformity to standards, relating to roadside planting, established by them.
Ample precedent for such action by highway authorities is to be found in the states of Washington, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Nearly 2 million trees will be required for complete ornamentation of the Washington state highways; Massachusetts has planted nearly 50,000 up to date; Wayne County, Michigan, has specifications governing all roadside work, which telephone and electric service companies must
observe; and Kane County, Illinois, is planting the full distance of its famous Fox River Trail. El Paso County, Texas, made a beginning on this work a few years ago. On the “Ideal Section’’ of the Lincoln Highway roadside planting was an important contract. The Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway Association has adopted the plan of planting pecan trees as mile posts along its highway from Richmond, Va., to Vicksburg, Miss.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have appointed landscape gardeners, under whose direction new planting is planned and executed, and existing trees are preserved during highway construction. Shade trees of consider-
♦The text of this pamphlet appeared as a series of articles in Concrete Highway Magazine for August, September and October, 1923, prepared by Robert Kingcry, Assistant Manager, Highways Bureau, Portland Cement Association formerly with 0. C. Simonds & Co., Landscape Gardeners, Chicago. Continuing demand for copies of the original articles exhausted the stock. It has therefore been reprinted, with new material, as a contribution to the general subject of highway improvement.	„	„	.	,
ROADSIDE PLANTING
3
able growth may govern the location of a pavement so long as a serious disalignment is not the result. Locating engineers in Pennsylvania are instructed that “there is no excuse whatever for any trees being unnecessarily destroyed or injured during the progress of the work.”
I. Location
In locating roadside trees, standard distances should be established from the edges of the pavement and front the property lines for a belt of planting, at the same time giving due regard to safety for present traffic, possible future widening of the pavement, and drainage. The planting location must also take into consideration the location of pole and wire
lines, the recommended position for which is at the extreme sides of the right-of-way, preferably not more than 3 feet from the property or fence line.
It is recommended that on a 60-foot right-of-way the trees be set not less than 16 feet from the center line nor more than 22 feet, giving a minimum clearance ol 6 Icet from the side of a 20-foot pavement to the planting.
On a 66-fool right-of-way (the standard highway) they should be not less than 16 feet, nor more than 25 feet, from the center line. Wider highways may be treated similarly, always reserving a belt or right-of-way for roadside planting which will not encroach upon other roadside utilities. Such a belt of roadside plant i ng is far more i o be desired than straight, parallel, rows of trees.
Natural clusters of trees break the monotony of evenly spaced planting.