40 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



I thought a very small garden just as well to experiment with till expe- 

 rience had enabled me to make few mistakes. By a slow process at little 

 cost, I have learned that a garden cannot be planted once for all time, with- 

 out a great cost of changing the earth about the plants. Herbaceous plants 

 need a rotation, a change from one place to another. The soil becomes 

 depleted of certain elements, or the physical conditions are not right; in- 

 sects and fungi find their favorite plants and settle down in great numbers 

 to feed and multiph'. 



Had I v;aited for $5,000 a year or possibly even $500, the garden would . 

 have been delayed for many years, if it were begun to this day. I had 

 read a great deal about growing plants in pockets on a shad)^ slope, the 

 pockets surrounded by boulders. Rockwork and pockets were thorouglily 

 tested during several seasons, till I became convinced that, however well 

 these might answer for the cool, damp summers of Great Britain, they are 

 not successful in IMichigan. Most herbaceous plants thrive better on level 

 ground, and when trees and shrubs are near, the latter get nourishment 

 that the cultivated herbs suffer for. During twentj'^-seven summers the 

 garden has had no change of management, and has gradually been much 

 improved as the director acquired more experience. Evolution is the word 

 which emphatically applies to this garden. 



One horticulturist in particular has claimed that the area now^ under 

 cultivation is not a botanic garden, because there is not included under 

 the same management greenhouses, a library, a botanical museum. The 

 museum we once had, and have not despaired of having another. It is 

 true the greenhouses managed by the horticultural department, while they 

 are useful to that department, are of very little use to the botanical de- 

 partment. 



The spot for the location of our garden was very fortunate. Most of it 

 is situated on both sides of a brook, and portions of it on a raised flat of 

 Cedar river. In this place, depressed eight or ten feet, the whole may be 

 seen to good advantage from the surrounding banks. The soil of the flats 

 is good, suffering little for moisture. Before used for a garden, the spot 

 contained two or three rubbish piles, and was otherwise unsightly by grow- 

 ing coarse grasses, sedges, thistles, wild parsnips, and briars. While such 

 a place is most suitable for a garden, it is also likely to insure permanence, 

 as no college authorities are likely to covet the ground for buildings. . 



The area of the garden is now just about an even two acres, and con- 

 tains very nearly twenty-three hundred species and varieties of seed-plants 

 and ferns. The garden is approximately the shape of a capital letter T. 



Not counting considerable of my time, especially during the long vaca- 

 tion, the annual expenses of the garden, with its present size, are not far 

 from $900.00, by far the cheapest garden of its size and quality of any witliin 

 my acquaintance. Our good Professor of Horticulture says that it ought 

 to be much extended, and should cost not less than $5,000.00 per year. 



For convenience there are at irregular intervals seven foot-bridges ex- 

 tending across the brook. These as well as the location of paths, bogs 

 and ponds, are indicated on the map. In my report for 1882, printed in 

 the Report of the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, appears a 

 neat map of the garden, then consisting of about one-third of an acre, on 

 which were cultivated not far from 700 species of seed-plants. Tlie map 

 was prepared by W. S. Holdsworth, '78, then instructor of drawing. 



I briefly quote from that report. 



