Second NAL Arbor Day plans announced
Plans were announced this week by the NAL Site Manager's office for the second Arbor Day tree planting in the NAL Village. Employees who want to participate should bring shovels and meet at the Curia on Friday, May 1 at 1:30 p.m. (the date is a postponement from April 24, because of wet ground conditions). Following brief ceremonies, the group will move to the planting sites. In a prepared area west of the Kuhn farm barn at the corner of Sauk Boulevard and Batavia Road, and in the open field just south of the Photography house at 14 Sauk, some 150 trees will be planted.
The first Arbor Day planting held at NAL, on April 25, 1969, was highly successful and resulted in planting of over 100 ash trees in an area just east of the Cafeteria.
This year, varieties of maple, walnut, and cherry trees will be balled and wrapped in burlap, and carefully color-coded to match a specific planting plan. Planters may use the holes provided or, if so inclined, they can "dig their own."
Carrying out the desires of the Laboratory's Director, Robert R. Wilson, to "preserve what we have, add to it, and create with imagination, so that the site can become a joy to behold -- a source of pride for all of us," the Farm Management and Site Manager's Offices started the tree planting program in the winter of 1968-69 with 200 white and red pine, 14 feet in height, from the Argonne National Laboratory nursery. The planting was done in the extreme cold of the winter months, but was a successful beginning, with only 24 trees lost.
Another massive tree-moving undertaking was completed in April and May of 1969 when the Laboratory had an opportunity to acquire the entire Orentowski nursery, which lay in the path of a new line of the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America. A program was instituted to move 1,600 pieces from the nursery to the NAL Village in less than three weeks. A boon to this operation was the rainy spring season which followed and held loss to four and one-half percent.
The Spring of 1970 will see the beginning of the NAL boundary plantings, the "natural fences," consisting of native low-to-medium shrubs in irregular patterns along the NAL boundaries. This year, some 40,000 seedling plants will be planted from Eola Road west to the western boundary at the abandoned railroad. Eventually, the entire boundary of the site will be so planted.
The official conservation policy of the NAL includes the observation, "Nature may be bountiful, but it is not unlimited. The costs of conservation must be accepted as a new increase in the normal costs of doing business."
In each stage of planning at NAL, compatibility with Nature's original bounty is carefully weighed. "The National Accelerator Laboratory is pursuing a firm conservationist path in all of its relationships with nature and natural resources. Considerable study effort has been spent in developing a natural resources utilization plan that will satisfy the operation requirements at the Laboratory and will adhere to depletion and pollution standards considerably more stringent than current laws stipulate."
By the end of 1970, plantings of the following kinds of trees will be established at NAL:
| Austrian Pine | Red Oak | Seedless White Ash | Black Walnut |
| White Birch | Pin Oak | Black Alder | Bird Cherry |
| Concolor Fir | Sugar Maple | Redbud | Pin Cherry |
| Shadmaster Locust | Norway Maple | Thornless Honey Locust | Weeping Willow |
Bob Ebl, Designer in the Site Manager's Office who supervises the NAL plantings, says, "When these seedlings are established, they will provide NAL with a natural and aesthetically acceptable barrier which will also provide some security for the site."