388 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



White and blue spruce can be recommended for planting as orna- 

 mental trees. Of the balsam fir we bought fifty trees, grew them in 

 th'e shade for a few years and have succeeded in getting one tree to 

 live and grow where the sun shines. The white cedar, though it 

 seems to do well at Sioux Falls, no one has succeeded in making a 

 presentable hedge of at Vermillion. The red cedar is the only 

 native evergreen in the southeastern part of the state and is not 

 grown half enough. It is hardy, a fairly good grower, a drouth-re- 

 sister and will bear trimming. 



Among the weeping trees tried here Kilmarnock willow will not 

 stand, but we have some fine trees of the Wisconsin weeping willow. 

 Our camperdown elm is about eight feet across, but no taller than 

 when we got it four years ago, and forms the finest shade for a pan- 

 sy bed imaginable. An agent sold twenty or thirty weeping mul- 

 berries in Vermillion, but when they saw this beautiful country and 

 the big crops that we raise here they said by their actions that this 

 is no place for weeping, and they grew as straight as cottonwoods. 

 The cutleaf maple and cutleaf birch are inclined to do the same. 



There is a weeping mountain ash at Sioux Falls, the envy of every 

 horticulturist who sees it, trained "into a rustic seat under a bower." 



The evergreens all bear shearing more or less, but the cedar bears 

 it much better than the pines or spruces. 



The most perfectly dwarfed and pruned trees that I have seen in 

 South Dakota are the Russian mulberry, being ten years old and 

 only four feet high, compact and healthy, carved in the shape of 

 square blocks, eggs and inverted cones. 



The ailanthus (specimen sprout shown), we would class as an od- 

 dity, the root being hardy, but the top killing down year by year. 

 So we cut it down close to the ground in the fall, bury the stump 

 qnd train to a single sprout in the spring. The leaves on this 

 sprout, some of them, were over three feet long, a single pinnate. 



For shrubs the lilac takes the lead. Philadelphus, or mock orange, 

 is perfectly hardy. Snowball is hardy, but the drouth hurts it. 

 Japan quince is hardy but a shy bloomer. Quite a number are put- 

 ting in either the wild or Soulard crab as a flowering shrub, its pro- 

 fusion of peach-like blossoms giving it a beauty far surpassing 

 many of the so-called flowering shrubs. The flowering almonds are 

 hardly hardy enough to pay for cultivation. 



Did you ever see any one who did not love the flowering currant? 

 Perfectly hardy, almost the first flower of spring, deliciously scent- 

 ed, and yet we either have lo send back to mother, or get a chance to 

 beg one, for our nurserymen seem to forget in their strife for some- 

 thing new that some of the old favorites are the best after all. The 

 bush honeysuckle is worthy of a place in your dooryard, though in 

 all my travels I have seen but one. The red snowberry makes 

 a beautiful hedge, and a garden is very incomplete without some 

 spiraeas; the Van Houttii does very well with us. The late flowering 

 spiraeas, both pink and white, have a very delicate bloom. 



The new plants lately introduced by Professor Hansen from Rus- 

 sia are doing well with us. 



Among the native shrubs worthy of cultivation, the common 

 sumach makes a very pretty hedge by mowing down every fall. 



