The largest living creatures that man encounters are shade trees that are handily defined as trees that produce shade protection from the sunlight. Mankind loves and respects shade trees with their cooling benefits and the many available wood products, that improve the recreational environment and offer food and shelter for wildlife, birds, insects, and other creatures. Trees are planted and grown for many purposes; for their sculptured beauty, beautiful seasonal color, and flowers. Flowering trees are usually not planted to grow as shade trees, but mainly for their beautiful flowers, and their growth is not fast enough to produce a tree large enough to shade a house very well. Many specific products of shade trees are fruit, berry, nut, wood pulp, sugar, turpentine, bark, mulch, timber, and sawdust. Fast growing shade trees in landscapes tend to suppress weeds by shading the ground with minimum light. Shade trees purify our atmosphere by absorbing automobile emissions of carbon dioxide and replacing oxygen as fresh air to breath.

Large shade trees protect the soil from erosion and cool the earth beneath the trees with shade. The height of some longer shade trees can grow to 100 ft in the landscape, and often the roots grow out from the base of the tree, at least as far out as the height. Some botanists report that the greatest enemy of the forests of shade trees is agriculture, because civilization has cut down the trees in order to plant row crops and to build homes. Many large virgin forests of Longleaf Pine trees have vanished, and are replaced for planting and growing agricultural crops. The great forests of large, black walnut trees are now gone and replaced with condominiums, and large grassy lawns growing there instead. Early American botanists and explorers wrote letters about walking all day "underneath the cooling avenues of large Live Oaks and their graceful boughs that touched the earth." People are encouraged today to save the environment and to plant and grow large trees in their landscape. Eight to ten foot shade trees are best to provide fast growing trees for quick shade.

Shade Trees make an important and powerful statement in the landscape composition. Group plantings of shade trees can filter out automobile noise and noxious exhaust fumes. Single specimen tree plantings can make dramatic horizontal or vertical blockage for privacy.