48 THE HORTICULTUKE OF 



around Boston. Here are numerous beautiful resi- 

 dences, with highly cultivated gardens, orchards, and 

 well kept grounds; and just beyond, in Natick, where 

 the Apostle Eliot planted his apple trees, are cultivators 

 of the rose, whose sales amount to thousands of dollars 

 annually. 



Newton and Brighton have been noted for their cul- 

 tivation of fruits, trees and plants for nearly a hundred 

 years. The first nursery of any considerable note in 

 New England was commenced by John Kenrick, of New- 

 ton, in 1790, by the raising of peach trees from the 

 stone, to which he added in a few years the apple, cherry, 

 and other fruit trees. In 1797 he commenced a nursery 

 of qrnamental trees, two acres of which were planted 

 with the Lombardy poplar, then a most esteemed but 

 now despised tree. His nurseries became the most ex- 

 tensive in New England. In 1823 Mr. Kenrick took his 

 elder son, William, into partnership, and continued the 

 business until his decease in 1833. Peaches and cur- 

 rants were here extensively cultivated, and there were 

 manufactured in 1826 three thousand and six hundred 

 gallons of currant wine. William Kenrick's nursery at 

 Nonantum Hill in Newton, established in 1823, contin- 

 ued for twenty-seven years, and for a part of this time 

 he imported and sold more fruit trees than any other 

 nurseryman in New England. John A. Kenrick, brother 

 of William, also pursued the nursery business on the old 

 estate until his death in 1870. 1 William Kenrick was one 

 of the founders of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 

 a zealous, enterprising citizen, and the author of the "New 

 American Orcharclist," and a public writer. He entered 

 largely into the Morus Multicaulis speculation, propa- 

 gating hundreds of thousands of this tree both on his 



1 History of the Mass. Hort. Soc., pp. 33, 34. 



