i8g5. 



GARDENING. 



75 



butt, and from there in nearly horizontal 

 layers to the top. The summer foliage is 

 very thick, soft and beautiful; about the 

 end of September or in October it begins 

 to assume the golden tint that gave rise 

 to its English name. These trees have 

 borne cones for several years and this 

 season they are laden with them. These 

 cones are now ripe, and a curious thing 

 about them is that the moment you 

 touch them now (early November) they 

 drop all to pieces. And they contain any 

 (luantity of fine ripe seed. 



THE EDITOR VISITS BOSTON. 



II. 

 I-ORKST HILLS CUMETKRV 



Is one of the most extensive and beau- 

 tiful in the country and happily one of 

 the wealthiest and most progressive. It 

 is within a mile or so of the Arnold Ar- 

 boretum. Mr. J. G Barker, our long- 

 time friend and occasional contributor to 

 Gardf.ni.ng, is its superintendent. The 

 entrance to the cemetery is the most 

 beautiful of any we know, and we advise 

 our readers who may go to Boston to 

 visit Forest Hills and see the beautiful 

 trees, fresh lawns, and fine garden effects 

 to be found there. 



Tender Bedding Plants.— .\lthough it 

 is imperative that a large number of these 

 must be grown and planted out, select- 

 ness of variety and in the mannerof using 

 them is more studied than multitude 

 of plants; indeed there is a tendency to 

 lessen rather than increase this type of 

 decoration. 



Hardy plants on the other hand are 

 being used more and more, and a special 

 effort is being made to get together every 

 desirable and beautiful hardy perennial, 

 be it native, exotic or of garden origin. 

 These are not planted in formal beds or 

 borders, but appropriately set here and 

 there in masses, spreads or colonies with 

 befitting backgrounds, and an extensive 

 ■ rock work in a picturesque ' part of the 

 grounds is teeming with them and hardy 

 terns. While bedding plants give a bril- 

 liant showy efl'ect their gayness may be- 

 come tiresome and their sameness weari- 

 some; besides a too free use of them in a 

 cemeterv is not considered very good 

 taste. 



Evergreen shribbery beds are prac- 

 tically a new feature here, but one in 

 much vogue with Bowditch and some 

 other landscape gardeners. They are 

 usually of moderately large size and set 

 in the angle of a fork in the road or at a 

 bend, or where it is desirable to retain a 

 good appearance for the longest possible 

 space of time. They comprise the finer 

 spruces, firs, arbor vitaes, retinosporas, 

 podocarpus, cryptomerias, araucarias, 

 hollies, laurels, aucubas and the like in 

 mixture and close enough to about touch 

 one another. This planting is not per- 

 manent, it is for immediate effect onlj'. 

 All the tender plants as hollies, aucubas, 

 Spanish laurels, etc. are lifted in late fall, 

 heeled in over vv'inter in a deep pit and 

 planted out again in earlj* spring. The 

 beds filled with retinosporas, yews, podo- 

 carpus and others of doubtful hardiness, 

 are protected in winter b_v a temporary 

 close fence of cheap boards being tacked 

 up around them. After taking down this 

 fence in early spring if the evergreens are 

 too close they are thinned out or lifted 

 and replanted over again but thinner 

 than before. 



Decoration Day, of all days in the 

 }-car, is when most people visit the ceme- 

 teries, and they then expect to see the 

 planting finished and all the grounds 

 bright, fresh and clean. Bedding plants 

 being newly set out cannot make much 



of an appearance, but fortunately the 

 hardy perennials are then in the heyday 

 of their floral glory and the evergreen 

 beds are budding out fresh and interest- 

 ing, and the hardy shrubbery is every- 

 where in bloom, and the atmosphere 

 redolent with the fragrance of flowers. 

 Now the more hardy perennials, shrubs 

 and evergreens that are used the better 

 the work is likely to be done, and the less 

 is the rush to get out the tender plants in 

 the third and fourth weeks of May, often- 

 times really at a season too early for 

 many tropical plants to be committed to 

 the tender mercies of the elements. 



English ivy in many places is doing 

 splendidly. In warm, sheltered, partly 

 shaded nooks it is used to cover up the 

 steep rocky slopes, ledges or boulders. 

 To save it from the sunshine in winter 

 and the withering frosty winds Mr. 

 Barker has sheets of coarse bagging 

 dropped over it and fastened in place, 

 this is done before hard winter sets in, 

 and when it is removed in spring Mr. B. 

 assures us that the ivy looks most as 

 bright and green and healthful as it did 

 before it was covered up. 



Rock lined banks —The ground, like 

 much of New England land, is uneven and 

 very rocky, and steep banks border some 

 of the roads, and some of the more select 

 plats lie back to a high breast of rock or 

 a steep bank. Of course these banks, no 

 matter how steep they are or how grav- 

 elly and dr3' they may be, have got to be 

 covered. It is almost impossible to keep 

 grass green upon them in summer, and 

 with grass in view they'd have to be 

 sodded to begin with, and much of it 

 would have to be resodded every year 

 after to have it in fair condition. But 

 Mr. Barker has to a great extent gotten 

 over this difficulty by lacing up the banks 

 in a natural, irregular way with slabs of 

 the ornamental rocks that are blasted 

 and cleared on the place, and among 

 these rocks he has planted hardy vines 

 and shrubs; at the top shrubs are set out 

 to give a natural fringe, and vines as 

 clematis, Virginia creeper and trailing 

 roses to drape down over the rocks; and 

 at the bottom clinging vines as iv3' and 

 ampelopsis are planted to grow upward 

 to clothe the stones, and maybe a skirt- 

 ing of perennials and a few shrubs to de- 

 prive it of any artificial appearance. 



Rhododendron maximum is our wild 

 great laurel or rose bay; it grows wild in 

 the rocky woods and mountains from 

 Nova Scotia south through New Eng- 

 land, New York and along theAlleghenies 

 to Georgia. It is a large growing ever- 

 green species with pale rose colored flow- 

 ers that come into bloom with us in July, 

 after all the other garden hybrid varieties 

 are past. Although it is an exceedingly 

 desirable ornamental shrub we seldom 

 find it in our gardens, more's the pity. 

 We were therefore the more delighted to 

 come upon bold masses of it in the ceme- 

 tery grounds, large, broad, old specimens, 

 and to listen to their praises bv Mr. 

 Barker. We have before now called our 

 readers' attention to this worthy shrub, 

 and we recommend it again to ihem! 

 Being native in our eastern mountains it 

 is perfectly hardy, and as i- is a true spe- 

 cies and raised from seed the plants are 

 not grafted but on their own roots, hence 

 more likely to root well and continue in 

 luxuriant health than are hvbrids. But 

 mind you, you want both— the hybrids 

 for deep color and June flowers, and 

 Maximum for July blossoms. 



A PIGMY Spir.ea.— Mr. Barker called 

 our attention to a tiny kind of spirrea he 

 had in quantity growing in pots in a 

 cold frame. It formed dense little tufts 



about three inches high, nevertheless it 

 was free and thrifty, and perfect cushions 

 of metallic brown foliage. It grows well 

 and is easily propagated, and he uses it 

 for edgings and as a low plant in bedding, 

 but it has never bloomed with him and 

 he is not sure what species it may be- 

 long to. 



A Norway Spruce Hedge. — Mr. Barker 

 showed us a stretch of a very good Nor- 

 way spruce hedge and remarked: "We 

 never trim it except once in two years, 

 and then in July." 



Berberis Tiiunbekgii was largely used 

 as a low growing shrub spread between 

 and skirting the rocks, and when we saw 

 it its foliage had turned to a vivid crim- 

 son and gold, giving it a splendid effect 

 Add to this its glossy scarlet berries 

 which are abundantly produced and hang 

 all winter on the naked branches of the 

 shrub, even till the new leaves appear in 

 spring, and we have a gem of a little 

 shrub that is both hardy and easy to 

 grow. 



The grass lawns in a cemeterv are 

 necessarily very extensive, in fact "aside 

 from the roads and flower beds all the 

 ground is under grass, and it has got to 

 be kept as clean and well mown as the 

 lawn in any private garden. In former 

 times little mounds were raised over the 

 graves, but according to modern regula- 

 tions these mounds are no longer made 

 the burying ground is smooth and level 

 and the graves are indicated bv stone 

 markers. This adds greatl v to the beautv 

 of the newer parts of the cemetery. Nor 

 are stone curbings or iron railing any 

 more allowed around the newly acquired 

 lots; in the older parts of the grounds 

 where mounds, curbings and railings 

 existed before the new regulations went 

 into force the corporation are powerless 

 to make any change. 



Weeding the grass.— "What are those 

 men doing there?" we asked Mr. Barker 

 as we saw a number of men on their 

 knees picking among the grass. "Thev 

 are weeding thegrass." he replied. " Vo"u 

 see the grass seed used there was some 

 extra select lawn mixture, and sure 

 enough it was a mixture judging by the 



amount of weeds that 



up among 



the grass. I'll never buy any more gr 

 mixture." 



Sodding.— The terrace banks and mar- 

 gins of the lawns, sav alongside the road- 

 ways, are sodded, but wherever the land 

 IS level and broad getting up a lawn from 

 grass seed is preferred to sodding, the 

 seed giving a better and cleaner lawn. 



"The GR.\ss SEED lusenowisKentuckv 

 Blue and Red Top mixed together, and 

 never any other grass or clover, and vou 

 see what a fine, even, clean carpet of 

 grass we get from it. That grass there 

 that is so green and thick was sown 

 about the first of September, but all that 

 new ground we are at work on grading 

 and getting ready will be sown about the 

 first of November. We have excellent suc- 

 cess sowing at that time. We sow the 

 seed, rake it in and roll the ground, and 

 the seed lies dormant in the ground under 

 the snow trll early spring, when it comes 

 up sooner than spring-sown grass, takes 

 good hold ofthe ground and makes a nice 

 carpet right away." 



TopDRESsiNG the GRASS.— "No, I have 

 given up the use of stable manure alto- 

 gether as a topdressing for grass, and 

 confine myself to chemical manures and 

 unleached wood ashes only. The grass 

 keeps in fine condition as you see, a vast 

 amount of labor is saved, and then we 

 are rid of one of the greatest sources of 

 weeds in lawns, namclv, topdressing with 



