Trees for Lady Bird
Are you old enough to remember the “Keep America Beautiful” slogan? It’s from back in the 1960s (and has nothing to do with current political swag).
During President Johnson’s time in office, the First Lady took on a nation-wide project to clean up the look of the place.
“We need urgently to restore the beauty of our land.” – Lady Bird Johnson
According to the LBJ Library website, her Highway Beautification Act bill almost didn’t pass:
Just before the 1965 Congressional session ended, Johnson called his Cabinet and top staffers to a meeting. He admonished them, “The Congress is about ready to adjourn, and they haven’t passed Lady Bird’s Highway Beautification Act…Now, she wants that bill. And if she wants it, I want it, and by God, we’re going to pass it.” The bill passed soon after.
While her addition of lovely flowers and trees to Washington, D.C. and other cities was well received, the reduction of the number of highway billboards didn’t exactly thrill advertisers. Drivers along those thoroughfares were happy, though.
The happiest American of all might have been a 10-year-old farm boy in Indiana.
Gary remembers his dad, Andrew, received a letter in the mail from the federal government – maybe from Lady Bird herself – explaining how the Wernes could participate in a new program designed to beautify America.
The plan was to plant pine trees on two acres of former woodland. A neighbor had done some strip mining in the 1950s and, while they were at it, scooped up some coal from the nearby Werne property.
Gary was just a kid, but this offer made no sense to him. No sense at all.
“The two acres were located in an area already surrounded by trees – lots of trees,” he told me this morning, scratching his head (as his pandemic-era barber, I asked if he needed another haircut already; scratching is usually a sure sign).
Even though the two acres were far from any highway (it would be another decade before I-64 came through, four miles to the north of us), the plan paid well.
“Seven cents a piece,” my husband remembers. “That was good money.”
The big payoff, though, was that Gary got to stay home from school to help his dad with the planting. Four or five days over the course of two weeks that spring of ’66. Thanks, Lady Bird!
The seedlings – all 2,800 of them – arrived in bundles of 50. Each seedling was about the size of a pencil. Only just half as big around and half again as long, according to Gary.
If you haven’t already done the math, planting 2,800 seedlings for the federal government at seven cents apiece amounts to $200. If you drop that amount into an online “inflation calculator,” that adds up to a bit more than $1,600 in today’s dollars.
The boxes of seedlings from Lady Bird were lined with burlap, to help keep them moist. Each morning, Gary and Andrew would pack up what they thought they’d be able to plant that day and head off to the woods.
Andrew didn’t necessarily bring Gary along to give him this story to regale me with 55 years later. The reason was far more practical than that: Gary was a kid and closer to the ground.
Here’s the tool they brought with them:
This is what you call a “grubbing hoe.” It’s a tougher version of the everyday hoe we all use in our gardens today.
As I captured these photos of a 1910-era grubbing hoe from an old eBay sales page, I couldn’t resist reading the description out loud, with emphasis on words like “antique” and “primitive.”
Gary snorted: “I’ve probably still got ours over at the farm. Works just fine.”
That reminded me of the day a decade or so that his Uncle Thomas came for a visit. The farm is his homeplace, and he enjoyed poking around in the garage, which includes a workbench and tools. At one point, Thomas asked if he could take some of the antique tools to put on display in his home back in Lexington. “Normally, I’d say yes – but, uh … I still use those particular ones,” was Gary’s answer.
Back to 1966, Andrew and Gary loaded up a tractor with the bundles of seedlings and the grubbing hoe and headed off to Lady Bird’s Two Acres.
Where exactly are these acres located?
On the left edge of this satellite shot, that’s our house about halfway up, The top third or so along the edge is now a soybean field. The yellow square contains about two acres of trees that Gary and Andrew planted for Lady Bird.
I think Gary was a little disappointed to see this view, as there’s really not a difference in the look between the pre-existing native trees and the pine trees the First Lady sent: Virginia pine, white pine and red pine.
“What they sent us was pretty scrubby stuff,” he says. “And the un-reclaimed acreage was poor soil. I’m surprised anything grew.”
It didn’t take long for Gary and his dad to work out a system:
- Andrew swung the grubbing hoe and cut a hole in the ground for planting
- Gary quickly dropped in a seedling
- Andrew used the hoe to pack down the earth around the newly planted pine
- Move forward and repeat 2,799 times
They planted the trees about six feet apart in rows that were about 12 feet apart.
When it was time to head home for supper, Andrew insisted on hiding any leftover seedlings in a hollow tree stump. He kicked leaves over the grubbing hoe to camouflage it.
Ten-year-old Gary thought, “Who in hell is going to wander around in our woods hoping to find a few seedlings and an old hoe?” Ten-year-old Gary said nothing out loud, though.
Gary remembers asking his father how long it would take for the trees to grow.
“It’ll take about 100 years, son, for them to amount to anything.”
Little Gary did the math. “So you’ll be about 140 and I’ll be 110 and we’ll come back then and cut some of them down.”
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