142 The American Flower Garden 



When one cannot afford to move big trees, recourse may be had 

 to the fast growing kinds, trees that skim the surface cream of the 

 soil, as it were, rather than delve for a living deep down in it. 

 Mulching, feeding and frequent watering will cause them to make 

 rapid growth, but note how many willows, locusts and poplars are 

 uprooted by storms, how many branches of the silver and other 

 soft-wood maples are broken by ice and riddled by borers. 

 However necessary it may be to include such trees for swift 

 returns on a new place, it must be recognised that their tenure 

 is temporary. Permanent satisfaction is derived from the 

 sturdy oaks, the hard maples, the lofty, Gothic-arched elm, the 

 beeches, graceful, clean and strong, the straight-shafted tulip 

 tree, the lemon-scented silver linden, and other trees of slower 

 growth but more lasting beauty. The red oak will grow as fast 

 as the sugar maple. 



Some trees will be chosen for their blossoms alone. Who 

 would forego the loveliness of the dogwood, whose horizontal, 

 leafless branches, starred over with large white flowers, thrust 

 themselves out from the woodland border in May with abandoned 

 grace; or, symmetrically trained by the nurseryman, reconcile 

 themselves to a conventional lawn ? But long before the dogwood 

 blossoms whiten the landscape, the lovely tribe of magnolias 

 begins its unrivalled floral effects that may be prolonged three 

 months from March to August in the vicinity of New York. 

 The Reverend Mr. Hall, a missionary returning from China many 

 years ago, brought with him several specimens of a low-growing 

 magnolia with exquisite, star-like, narrow-petalled, delicately 

 fragrant white flowers, that he offered to many nurserymen in this 

 country if only they would pay the transportation charges. AH 

 declined, until finally the late Mr. Parsons, of Flushing, took them 



