128 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



or greens tends to appropriately enliven and enrich the general 

 appearance of a crowded city, where the effect of everything is 

 artificial, and more or less formal or tedious. 



In the city, the surrounding conditions are not primarily favor- 

 able for the growth of plants. The air is apt to be hot, dry, and 

 dust-laden, if not actually impure. Consequently the soil should 

 be thoroughly enriched, and the most vigorous and hard}^ trees 

 and shrubs employed. Evergreens seldom do well in large 

 crowded cities. It is better to plant certain hardy, deciduous 

 trees and shrubs, such as the Privet, Weigela, Snowball, Sjnrcra 

 opuUfolia, American Thorn, Philadelphus, Honey-Locust, Ameri- 

 can Linden, Norway and Sugar Maples, and the Oriental Plane 

 trees, than to meet with failure by the introduction of other less 

 hardy material. 



The Persian rug in flowers or foliage plants is an admirable 

 thing properly placed, but then it is not always in harmony with 

 the natural effects suitable to a special surface of greensward. 

 Carpet or ribbon gardening, artistically composed, is both right 

 and proper in its way, only it should be subordinated to, as well 

 as coordinated with, other compositions of color throughout the 

 entire system of planting on any special lawn. Color for almost 

 every one is a great and positive delight. This delight may be 

 more sensuous and less purely intellectual than that inspired by 

 agreeable form, but it belongs more truly, nevertheless, to the 

 restful physical pleasure associated with the lawn. If gardeners 

 were all artists, we should have fewer examples of incongruity 

 in both form and color. 



A knowledge of plants, and the possession of an adequate sup- 

 ply, does not always insure a satisfactory grouping and massing 

 of them. There is needed an artistic sense of form and color 

 effects that, if not inborn, comes only with observation, reading, 

 and an innate love of the beautiful. A successful propagator 

 will not necessarily be a good lawn decorator. In addition to 

 this special fitness, there must be a general plan, carefully 

 studied as to its application to the locality and surroundings to 

 be treated. A ground plan should be made, drawn to a scale, of 

 the locality to be embellished, and the beds or groupings located 

 and carefully studied as to perspective and outline. The plants 

 slioiild be selected with reference to height, form, and color for 

 eacli individual bed, simply considered as a part of the general 



