THE CULTIVATED POPLARS. 



I. GENERAL REMARKS. 



There has been little attempt in experiment station literature to 

 discuss matters of ornamental gardening. The so-called practical 

 problems connecting directly with bread-winning have necessarily 

 and properly absorbed the energies of investigators. But the 

 ornamentation of rural and suburban homes is quite as much 

 within the province of experiment station work ; and it should 

 also be remembered that the growing of plants is itself an indus- 

 try which enlists a vast amount of capital, and this nursery busi- 

 ness has received little direct and explicit aid from experiment 

 station publications. The present essay is undertaken for the 

 double purpose of explaining certain fundamental principles in 

 landscape gardening — a subject to which the poplars readily lend 

 themselves — and of unraveling a web of difficulties respecting the 

 species and varieties of poplars, into which the nursery catalogues 

 seem to have fallen. An investigation of the botanical and horti- 

 cultural features of the poplars has been assiduously prosecuted for 

 upwards of two years, and the writer has had the free use of var- 

 ious nurseries and plantations in Western New York and the aid 

 of botanists in many parts of the country. As a group, the pop- 

 lars possess comparatively small value in landscape planting, but 

 this very fact affords me the opportunity I seek to press home 

 the fallacy of certain common practices amongst planters. 



At the outset, I must be allowed to explain that landscape gar- 

 dening is the embellishment of grounds in such fashion that they 

 shall possess landscape or nature-like effects. This definition at 

 once removes from our consideration all the formal effects of 

 flower-beds and sheared trees, which, while useful at times, bear 

 no closer relation to landscape gardening than a cup of paint bears 

 to the fine art of painting. In other words, a landscape garden — 

 and that should mean every country yard, however small or sim- 

 ple — should have in it the elements of a picture. It should appear 

 to have one thought or feeling running through it all, and this is 



