128 MASSACHUSETTS IIOIlTICULTUIiAL SOCIETY. 



compose a border wllilerness. Through this wiiuls a long, roman- 

 tic, and, from tlie house, ahnost invisible walk, made musical by the 

 birds, and fitfully dashed with sunshine and shadows; the children's 

 army-tent being pitched on the green above, where the stars and 

 stripes are Hying. Thus are the picturesque and the beautiful 

 combined. Fitness in every thing. And over the whole the spirit 

 of neatness and harmony presides. 



The mansion-house is of Roxbury stone, centrally placed, with 

 woodbine and ivy climbing up to the eaves ; and not very far from 

 the corner stands a stately group of Norway spruces guarding the 

 nether-wood trail. The house is a model of its kind, tasteful and 

 convenient, ricli, but not extravagant. The garden lies south of 

 it, inclining slightly towards a centre, with a deep, loamy soil 

 favorable to horticultural experiments. Between the house and 

 garden, and a little below the carriage-house, stands an imposing 

 hedge of cannas; the seedlings and older plants of various kinds 

 so arranged as to rise with great uniformity to a centre line of 

 blooms, which appeared to look up over a roof of their broad, green 

 leaves, almost concealing the pretty greenhouse below. Mr. Gray 

 has raised nearly twenty-ftve hundred of these seedlings in a single 

 year. And your Committee beg leave to recommend this genus 

 of plants as very effective, and one which, in various other forms, 

 will contribute greatly to the beauty of a landscape. 



The principal varieties used are the Anneii discolor, Marechal 

 Vaillant, Nigricans, Pi'cmices de Nice, and Musicfolia sanguinea. 

 The greenhouse, fifty-six by sixteen feet, and a rose-house 

 seventy-five feet long, with curved glass roof, standing below 

 the cannas, are admirably planned and expensively constructed, 

 with warm water, pure or enriched, at command, and benches, 

 and walks of stone. In front of these is quite an area of 

 grass, in which flowers are massed in beds of various forms, 

 the wliole enclosed with a beautiful border of ivy, thrifty 

 and cle;in, planted this season. Of the beds, coleus, centaureas, 

 geraniums, and like bedding-plants, constitute the major part; each 

 bed being devoted to a single variety, edged with a narrow band 

 of some contrasting color. I''()lluwing the path farther down, the 

 eye was fixed at once uj)on a chain of beds on either side the main 

 garden-walk, likewise cut out in the grass, in alternate circles and 

 parallelogiams, extending some two hundred leet in all. The cir- 

 cles were planted with cannas of various kinds, nrundos, caladiums, 

 cordylines, and other tall-growing tropic-d plants, the ground be- 

 neath carpeted and edged with alyssum. Lobelia speciosa, Nieren- 



