}u)y 7, 1863. ] 



JOUBNAL OF HOETICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. 



PLANTS SUITABLE FOE A GKAVE. 



I yTIL ]iuUic taste submits to 

 woll-cliastened rules, it is 

 difficult to say Jiow far it 

 maj-go astrayinitsanxiety 

 after novelty even in this, 

 tlie most solemn of all the 

 instances in which, it exer- 

 cises its avocation — the de- 

 coration of the resting-place of 

 the departed. It affords little 

 surprise, therefore, that now 

 and then an authority, armed 

 v.ith the necessary powers, 

 enforces views differing con- 

 siderably from the wishes of 

 those who would like to do as 

 they pleased with the surface 

 earth above a departed rela- 

 tive. Certainly no assemblage 

 of objects presents so much 

 diversity of ornament as the 

 fashionable cemetery of the 

 jiresent day. A company of 

 weil-dressed people, conform- 

 ing as they invariably do to 

 certain conventional rules, 

 have so many things in common, that in point of diversity 

 they are tame compared with the fancy tomb and its 

 accompaniments. 



This growth of fancy is of recent date, for our old 

 churchyards present but little variety. Certainly the 

 local custom of one neighbourhood diflers from that of 

 another a hundred miles or more away ; but in each the 

 changing events of a couple of centuries have made but 

 little change in the manner in which the graves of the 

 dead have been honoured by the living. i?ut it is not 

 our province to give any opinion thus upon the stone, 

 marble, and metallic enormities. 



Another feature has been added which, perhaps, has 

 given rise to as much angry feeling as that of the sculp- 

 ture amongst those who assume to have the direction of 

 matters of that kind — the planting of flowers upon and 

 around a grave ; and it is in answer to a query from 

 a correspondent, " What kind of flowers ought to be 

 planted there?" that I with some unwillingness address 

 myself to the task of giving my opinion on the subject. 



Although the decoration of the graves of departed 

 friends with flowers is of great antiquity, and has been 

 kept alive by the stirring appeals of the poet as well as 

 the writer of romance ; yet in many parts of England it 

 has either fallen into disuse or has never been practised 

 at all, and it is questionable whether it has ever been so 

 popidar in any part of England as it is in The Principality. 

 The impetus, however, given to it by the customs of 

 many of the well-to-do in the example they set in deco- 

 rating the tombs of their frieuds in our public cemeteries 

 No. 119.— Yet. v., New Series, 



may, doubtless, find an echo in the other classes ; and 

 after some extraordinary attempts at novelty made 

 by some of the more ambitious something like uniformity 

 may, perhaps, be at length arrived at, and the extrava- 

 gant idea too often displayed may receive such an 

 amount of public censure as to make it a matter of 

 wide exception. 



Assuredly the simplicity of our primitive fathers never 

 contemplated that the decorations of the graveyard should 

 compete with the parterre, although the latter at that 

 early period was of meagre extent as compared v,'ith its 

 magnitude now ; and most likely the system of planting 

 flowers over a grave had its origin in the first instance 

 in gathered flowers being scattered there. The sympa- 

 thetic mind of the poet can easily suggest to itself the 

 innocent gambols of young children, plucking the Violets, 

 Primroses, and other wayside flowers that came in the 

 way of their accompanying their only remaining parent 

 to visit the grave of her much-loved partner. It is very 

 easy to picture licr seated on the grassy mound, the turf 

 from its recent disturbance having a withered and unin- 

 viting appearance ; and it requires no great flight of the 

 imagination to conjecture the tiny lapfuls ot Daisies, 

 Buttercups, and Violets of the little flower-gatherers left 

 as an ofl'ering on their father's grave ; while on a second 

 visit the mother's ears are saluted on the journey by the 

 news that the eldest of the little party in plucking a 

 Violet pulled up a plant also, and suggests it might 

 perhaps grow on some naked place on "father's grave," 

 where the turf did not meet. Transported there, it grows, 

 is carefully watched, and at each visit its history and 

 how it came there is brought to mind ; and another naked 

 place being jperceived, a plant is this time sought for aoid 

 brought to occupy the vacant spot. Erom such begin- 

 nings it is likely we owe our somewhat overstrained 

 mode of ornamenting the grave with the gayest orna- 

 ments of the flower garden. Observe, I say " overstrained 

 notion of ornament," for I by no means fall into the 

 views of those who think such things suitable there, 

 however much it may be desirable to do honour to the 

 remains of those gone from \is. Certainly the feelings 

 which prompt such offerings are of more consequence 

 than the offering itself ; but society at large would speedily 

 make unpleasant remarks if some mourner at a funeral 

 attended that ceremony attired in the gayest colours that 

 fashion commands in the ball-room. It would bo held 

 as a poor excuse for such an unusual departure from es- 

 tablished customs to be told that " respect for the dead " 

 prompted the bearer to array herself in that way. 



Following out the sober idea of suiting the ornament 

 to the purpose, let us see in what way the " little spot 

 of gi'ound" — the final earthly resting-place of each of 

 us, or of such as may be so honoured, ma,y be beautified 

 without any departure from the feelings which ought to 

 pervade sucji a place. 



I bj' no means object to all floral decoration, but as far 

 as possible I would advise its being with low-growing 

 indigenous plants, and more especially such as tlower 

 early. 



No. 771.— Vol. XXX., Old Sebfes. 



