306 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



We have got to give over a little ground unreservedly and un- 

 grudgingly to purely ornamental purposes. We can crop an or- 

 chard for twenty years and pasture it forever, if grass continues to 

 grow, but we cannot figure on getting anything out of ornamental 

 ground except flowers and beauty, and room for necessary walks. 

 When we get into a frame of mind which recognizes this cardinal 

 principle in ornamental planting, then we can work intelligently. 



As we study upon the problems before us, we will find that there 

 are trees other than shade trees, and that some are peculiarly adapted 

 to grouping. These are mostly conifers, commonly called ever- 

 greens. For myself, I am very partial to them, perhaps because I 

 have most time in winter to sit in the house and look at and admire 

 them. In Ohio, where evergreens only grow wild to a very limited 

 extent, the conifers give a distinct character to a place which no 

 other planting can give, besides being valuable in sheltering from 

 cold northern and western winds. Their protective powers are won- 

 derful. In the shelter of a magnificent bank of Norway spruce to 

 the northwest of my own home, I can unfold and refold a newspaper 

 with scarcely a rattle of the paper when the wind is blowing a gale 

 of sixty miles an hour on the other side. They seem to give off 

 considerable warmth, for when the thermometer is three or four de- 

 grees below freezing point, the snow will melt for 20 feet to the 

 leeward of the group. 



There must be something pleasing about the shelter of the trees, 

 for when my neighbors let their poultry out on pleasant winter days 

 they come over and loaf all day on the sunny side of them, although 

 it is thirtj^ rods from their own home where they are fed and have a 

 comfortable house. I have with me photographs of these wind- 

 breaks, w^hich will be handed around presently. I have before 

 hinted that evergreens may be at a discount through a large part 

 of this State because they form so prominent a part of the natural 

 landscape. 



Where a man or his family have a prejudice against evergreens, 

 bushy forms of deciduous trees may be used. The purple fringe, the 

 white fringe and the common dogwood may be cut back and made 

 to throw out stems near the ground, assuming bush forms. I have 

 a purple fringe with more than fifty stems, and at a distance in the 

 winter it might pass for a large syringa. The white lilac grows 

 twenty feet high, the purple one twelve or more, while the syringa 

 grandi-flora grows sixteen feet in height and eight or ten broad. It 

 is one of our very finest large shrubs, but not generally planted be- 

 cause the flowers are not fragrant. These, with the other syringas, 

 the snowballs, and red willows, or dogwood; the Tartarian honey- 

 suckle, the Japanese quince, the golden splrea and the single and 



