EEPOETS. 



EEPORT OF THE COM. ON ORNAMENTAL GARDENING, 



For the Year 18G1. 



BY WILLIAM C. STRONG, SECRETARY. 



It was to be expected that the labors of the Committee would be light. 

 Our peaceful art shrinks from the presence of arms. Yet, while there has 

 been less than usual display and competition during the past season, we 

 think there is a permanent and growing love of horticulture among our 

 citizens. Very few, if any, of the noted estates and gardens in this section 

 have suffered from neglect, and in some cases, though to a less extent than in 

 past years, new grounds have been opened, glass structures erected, and other 

 improvements made. It is an unwelcome fact that, owing to the attractions 

 of the cheap, rich and exhaustless fields of the West, and also the larger 

 " promise to pay" of commerce, the agriculture of the Commonwealth has been 

 at least stationary, if not even in retrograde, for the past few years. But 

 whilii the farm may have been deserted for the counting-room, it may not be 

 unreasonable to expect that our business men, as they again go out to adorn 

 their country seats, and pursue their experiments in rural culture, will set 

 such an example, and give such a stimulus as will bring back a more thorough 

 and scientific agriculture throughout the State. Forbidding as much of our 

 soil is, by nature, we have multiplying proofs of its susceptibility to the 

 highest possible adornment, and its surprising capacity of production. 



ESTATE OF DR. LODGE. 



As an instance of marked success, in this combination of landscape gardening 

 and agriculture, the estate of Dr. Lodge may be mentioned. The site selected 

 was the naturally rough, bleak, rock-bound shore of Cape Ann. Yet science 

 and art have so transformed this place that now we see an intermingling of 

 beauty and luxuriance and grandeur, scarcely to be equalled in the country. 

 Verdant lawns stretch to the very ocean's edge, which yield two crops, year 

 after year, of over three tons per acre. Successive gardens of the pear and 

 apple, of root and other field crops, all under the lee of the various spurs of 

 huge rock, each suggest the luxuriance of the West, if, shut out from the 

 sight, we could also shut out the sound of the ever-murmuring sea. 



As the visit to this place was unofficial, it may not be proper to dwell upon 

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