STATE) POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 95 



the farms will be better farmers ; happier in their work, knowing 

 better what the possibilities of country life may be. And those 

 who go to the towns and cities will be better fitted to enjoy any 

 advantages, while their minds will constantly turn to the pleasant 

 things they learned in childhood. Many of them will return to 

 spend their declining years on the farm. 



ORNAMENTAL PLANTING ABOUT THE FARM 



HOME. 



By Prof. Fred W. Card, Kingston, R. I. 



The subject of ornamental planting leads at once to the larger 

 subject of landscape gardening. It is proper, therefore, at the 

 beginning to ask ourselves what is landscape gardening and what 

 is it not. Landscape gardening is not the growing of plants for 

 their flowers, however desirable that may be. Neither is it the 

 growing of plants for their individual beauty. Still further, it 

 is not the growing of plants for the production of pattern designs 

 or such effects as might be sought in the decoration of a dinner- 

 table. Landscape gardening may embrace all these but it is first 

 and primarily the production of a picture, a picture of which the 

 home should be the center. This picture differs in many respects 

 from that produced by a painter upon canvas. The artist who 

 produces the garden picture must make it presentable from every 

 point of view. He must reckon with possible damage from 

 insects and fungi, from storms and accidents. He must further- 

 more produce a picture which is presentable when made and' 

 which shall grow in beauty as the years go by. All these things 

 are not easy, yet the results will be far better if a definite object 

 is sought than otherwise. Too often ornamental planting con- 

 cerns itself only with the individual plants involved, forgetting 

 entirely the effect upon the scene as a whole. The result is more 

 often a promiscuous jumble than a restful picture. 



In its development landscape gardening has passed through 

 different stages. In the olden days each man's house was his 

 castle, surrounded by high protecting walls. The garden was 

 limited to the space within these walls. This led of necessity to 

 narrow conceptions, sharp lines and angles and geometric designs. 



