April showers bring May flowers--and new maple and magnolia trees--to the Yard.

In the second part of a two-year program by the Harvard University Planning Group, nearly 80 new trees are being planted this spring to replace the Yard's ailing elm trees. More than a dozen of the new trees took root yesterday.

Landscapers said yesterday that the new arrivals include a wide range of trees and shrubs which will bloom within the next several months: red maples, honey locus, madasequoia, swamp white oaks and dogwood magnolias.

Close to 60 trees were planted last spring in the initial efforts to refurbish the Yard's landscaping.

The Yard's elm trees are infected with Dutch Elm Disease, a naturally-occurring disease transferred from Holland by the elm bark beetle, according to an employee with Hartney/Greymont Tree and Landscape, the company doing the tree replacement.

The employee estimated that the elm trees are over 100 years old. planted sometime in the late nineteenthcentury.

The ailing trees will be removed in stages asthey become too infected to remain in the yard.

"We'll slowly patch them up until they're sougly [we'll] have to take them down," says PatDuffy, an employee of Hartney/Greymont and co-headof the tree-planting project.

The project to beautify the Yard includes noother plans for further landscape development,according to Michael A. Ellicott, director offacilities operations and maintenance.

"We want to keep the landscape simple withlow-maintenance shrubs and trees," he said.

Ellicott said the department plans to finishthe beautification project by the beginning ofMay