288 BOARD OF AGKICULTURE. 



responsibility here. How often it lias been seen where one neighbor 

 whose love for shrub and flower has caused his neighbor to catch the same 

 spirit for beauty until the Avhole street is a garden spot. 



The planting of trees and shrubs is a means of increasing land values, 

 a few dollars expended thus is a valuable investment. Our forefathers 

 had but one idea, and that was to make everything count toward finan- 

 cial benefit; so only fruits having commercial value were planted. But 

 in the last few years there have been immense strides made for planting 

 ornamental trees and shrubs. 



Large nursery firms give out that in the past ten years sales of orna- 

 mental stock has increased at least fifty per cent., showing education 

 in the right direction. Very much is said of the benefactions of Mr. 

 Rockefeller and Mr. Carnegie in bestowing their great wealth upon insti- 

 tutions of learning, yet Henry Shaw of St. Louis did a gi-eater work than 

 they when he founded the Botanical Gardens of Missouri. In this work 

 Mr. Shaw contemplated providing pleasure with incidental instruction to 

 the public; training gardeners and botanists and contiibuting to botanical 

 knowledge, and at his death left his millions as an endowment to the work 

 he had mapped out. Could there be greater good in this direction? 



It lays with ourselves to make our home the most blessed and hap- 

 piest place in this world. Now, how can we do it? We must not think 

 more of the almighty dollar than of the pleasures of the home circle. I 

 think one of the greatest sources of happiness are the flowers. Martin 

 Luther said that a flower in the window was strong enough to keep the 

 devil outside, and we never understand this until we make friends of the 

 flowers and see their power for good. Every flower is a preacher and a 

 teacher. It preaches sermons of beauty and teaches the lesson of nature. 

 It becomes a friend by whose friendship we are made better because it 

 can never be anything else but pure and uplifting. 



Let us banish the calf and all other intruders from the lawn and see 

 what we can do for the front yard. Men are not always interested in a 

 neat yard simply because they will have to cut the grass and there is no 

 pay in it, and flowers and shrubbery will not look well in long gi-ass, and 

 to make a long story short, they make a cattle pen of the yard. 



I want to say one word about planting. When you dig your hole for 

 bush or tree, or Avhatev'er you expect to plant, make it so your plant will 

 be down one inch deeper than it was I)efore. Make the hole larger every 

 way, and instead of setting the plant down in a l)unch as if its feet were 

 cramped, spread all the lower roots out carefully in the bottom of the hole 

 on the soft ground, then put in some soil, then spread out the next layer 

 of roots, and so on, that each root may be in as near the same place as 

 before dug up. Then put in a bucket of water, fill hole with soil and pack 

 firmly and I do not care what you set out it will live. 



But let me tell you a back yard will gi-ow shrubbery quite as well as 

 a lawn and for more than one reason I prefer some there, for we busy 



