straight rows or in large blocks with crisp linear bordersâto create grandiose vistas along which a grandiose monarch could survey his property. The Champs-Elysées, in Paris, one of the worldâs most famous tree-lined boulevards, was an earlier example of Le Nôtreâs style. Then at Versailles in particular, on what had been a swampy hunting preserve, he created an exotically formalized environment, mixing nature with a regal sense of order, and drew the lines and the angles with trees.
During the following century and a half Le Nôtreâs design concept was converted to public uses, showing up in the street plans of London, Berlin, Washington, and again his own city of Paris. In London the early trend, beginning around 1800, was to plant trees in the large open spaces that were being set aside as civic parks. The avenue in Berlin known as Unter den Linden, graced with rows of linden trees and leading up to the BrandenburgGate, became (with the Champs-Ãlysées) another of the worldâs best-known beautiful streets. Paris was extensively redesigned during the mid-nineteenth century by Baron George Eugène Haussmann, a city planner who favored broad boulevards and bands of vegetation for a mixture of reasons. The tree-lined avenues, according to Haussmann, would serve to âdisencumber the larger buildings, palaces, and barracks in such a way as to make them more pleasing to the eye, afford easier access on days of celebration, and a simplified defense on days of riot.â The margins of greenery, by Haussmannâs cunning aristocratic calculation, would preserve public order by allowing âthe circulation of air and light but also troops.â And in Washington, as early as 1791, the job of creating a planned city was given to a Frenchman named LâEnfant, who devised a webwork of radial boulevards and tree-lined vistas in much the same flavor as Le Nôtreâs Versailles.
From Paris and Washington, then, the trend spread to Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and other U.S. cities. A law passed in 1807 decreed that Detroit, in the territory of Michigan, should have a row of trees on each side of its larger avenues. And of course the landscaping impulse came also to New York City, arriving there in both of its antipodal forms. Central Park, designed in the 1850s by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, became Americaâs preeminent urban park, a great paradoxical rectangle of rolling and irregular forest, representing the romantic tradition that derived mainly from England. The legacy of Le Nôtre and Louis XIV appeared tooâas humble and soldierly street trees, some in rows, some alone, standing their ground in places like West Forty-fourth between Fifth and Sixth.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
According to Adrian Benepe, there are more than 600,000 street trees (and another two million park trees) in New York City. Each year the Department of Transportation plants about10,000 trees, replacing other trees that have been injured or removed in the course of road construction. Mr. Benepeâs own department, Parks and Recreation, plants another 10,000 trees. No tree is cut down unless it is dead, terminally ill and potentially infectious, or in the path of the Transportation Department, and yet those 20,000 annual plantings are barely enough to keep up with attrition. Some sources even say that attrition is running ahead of the replanting, and that New York is moving slowly, sadly, toward treelessness.
What drives the attrition? Most of New Yorkâs street trees suffer from too little water and too much heat. During respiration (yes, trees do breathe) they absorb sulfur dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride, peroxyacetyl nitrates, ethylene, and other noxious gases that can inhibit photosynthesis, disrupt their enzyme activity, and damage their foliage. City dust also tends to clog leaf pores, which further reduces photosynthesis
During the following century and a half Le Nôtreâs design concept was converted to public uses, showing up in the street plans of London, Berlin, Washington, and again his own city of Paris. In London the early trend, beginning around 1800, was to plant trees in the large open spaces that were being set aside as civic parks. The avenue in Berlin known as Unter den Linden, graced with rows of linden trees and leading up to the BrandenburgGate, became (with the Champs-Ãlysées) another of the worldâs best-known beautiful streets. Paris was extensively redesigned during the mid-nineteenth century by Baron George Eugène Haussmann, a city planner who favored broad boulevards and bands of vegetation for a mixture of reasons. The tree-lined avenues, according to Haussmann, would serve to âdisencumber the larger buildings, palaces, and barracks in such a way as to make them more pleasing to the eye, afford easier access on days of celebration, and a simplified defense on days of riot.â The margins of greenery, by Haussmannâs cunning aristocratic calculation, would preserve public order by allowing âthe circulation of air and light but also troops.â And in Washington, as early as 1791, the job of creating a planned city was given to a Frenchman named LâEnfant, who devised a webwork of radial boulevards and tree-lined vistas in much the same flavor as Le Nôtreâs Versailles.
From Paris and Washington, then, the trend spread to Chicago, San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and other U.S. cities. A law passed in 1807 decreed that Detroit, in the territory of Michigan, should have a row of trees on each side of its larger avenues. And of course the landscaping impulse came also to New York City, arriving there in both of its antipodal forms. Central Park, designed in the 1850s by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, became Americaâs preeminent urban park, a great paradoxical rectangle of rolling and irregular forest, representing the romantic tradition that derived mainly from England. The legacy of Le Nôtre and Louis XIV appeared tooâas humble and soldierly street trees, some in rows, some alone, standing their ground in places like West Forty-fourth between Fifth and Sixth.
â¢Â   â¢Â   â¢
According to Adrian Benepe, there are more than 600,000 street trees (and another two million park trees) in New York City. Each year the Department of Transportation plants about10,000 trees, replacing other trees that have been injured or removed in the course of road construction. Mr. Benepeâs own department, Parks and Recreation, plants another 10,000 trees. No tree is cut down unless it is dead, terminally ill and potentially infectious, or in the path of the Transportation Department, and yet those 20,000 annual plantings are barely enough to keep up with attrition. Some sources even say that attrition is running ahead of the replanting, and that New York is moving slowly, sadly, toward treelessness.
What drives the attrition? Most of New Yorkâs street trees suffer from too little water and too much heat. During respiration (yes, trees do breathe) they absorb sulfur dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride, peroxyacetyl nitrates, ethylene, and other noxious gases that can inhibit photosynthesis, disrupt their enzyme activity, and damage their foliage. City dust also tends to clog leaf pores, which further reduces photosynthesis
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