CHAPTER XX 

 A WORD IN FAVOR OF EVERGREENS* 



""T~YTHAT is the reason," said an intelligent European 

 \f\ horticulturist to us lately, "that the Americans 

 employ so few evergreens in their ornamental 

 plantations? Abroad they are the trees most sought after, 

 most highly prized, and most valued in landscape gardening, 

 and that, too, in countries where the winters are compara- 

 tively mild and short. Here in the northern United States, 

 where this season is both long and severe, and where you 

 have, in your forests, the finest evergreens, they are only 

 sparingly introduced into lawns or pleasure grounds." 



Our friend is right. There is a lamentable poverty of 

 evergreens in the grounds of many country places in this 

 country. Our plantations are mostly deciduous; and while 

 there are thousands of persons who plant, in this country, 

 such trashy trees (chiefly fit for towns) as the ailanthus, 

 there is not one planter in a hundred but contents himself 

 with a few fir trees as the sole representatives of the grand 

 and rich foliaged family of evergreens. 



They forget that, as summer dies, evergreens form the 

 richest background to the kaleidoscope coloring of the 

 changing autumn leaves; that in winter, they rob the chilly 

 frost-king of his sternest terrors; that in spring, they give a 

 southern and verdant character to the landscape in the 

 first sunny day when not even the earliest poplar or willow 

 has burst its buds. 



More than this, - - to look at the useful as well as the 

 picturesque, - - they are the body guards, the grenadiers, 

 the outworks and fortifications, which properly defend the 

 house and grounds from the cold winds and the driving 

 storms that sweep pitilessly over unprotected places in 



* Original date of May, 1848. 

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