52 THE HORTICULTURE OF 



drons and azaleas, the largest in our country, embraces 

 many thousands of plants, to which he is constantly 

 adding everything new and rare, demonstrating, 

 beyond doubt, that a. very large number of varieties 

 grown in Europe may be successfully cultivated in 

 our climate. Of such as are somewhat tender he has 

 the choicest varieties, which he stores in cool pits in 

 the winter, planting them out in the spring under an 

 immense canvass tent of seven thousand square feet, 

 and these, with the whole of his magnificent estate, 

 he opens to the public once a week gratuitously. 

 A few years since he made, in the name of the Massa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society, an exhibition of hun- 

 dreds of these under an immense tent on Boston 

 Common. The exhibition lasted for several weeks, 

 and was visited by throngs of gratified spectators, and 

 the income from it was generously given to constitute 

 a fund for the Society, encouraging the growth of 

 these plants. The avenues to this estate are planted 

 on either side with most beautiful pines, spruces, 

 beeches, maples, magnolias, and other trees intermixed 

 here and there with the rarest and costliest conifers, 

 rhododendrons, azaleas, and other flowering shrubs, all 

 of which have been grown up within the last thirty 

 years. Its meandering walks also planted on either 

 side with the rarest and newest conifer and other 

 evergreens ; its various vistas, giving here and there 

 a delightful view through different openings, are most 

 charming. The magnificent velvet lawn in front of 

 his house, the lovely Lake Waban in the rear, the 

 Italian garden, the parapets, ballustrades, statues and 

 vases, with the clipped trees of various forms, leads 

 one to suppose, as Mr. Sargent says, " that we are on 

 the Lake of Como." Here are fruit and vegetable 

 gardens enclosed with ornamental hedges ; a conserva- 



