VII. 



A WORD IN FAVOR OF EVERGREENS. 



May, 1848. 



" TTTHAT is the reason," said an intelligent European horticul- 

 V V turist to us lately, " that the Americans employ so few ever- 

 greens in their ornamental plantations ? Abroad, they are the trees 

 most sought after, most highly prized, and most valued in landscape- 

 gardening ; and that, too, in countries where the winters are com- 

 paratively mild and short. Here, in the northern United States, 

 where this season is both long and severe, and where you have, in 

 your forests, the finest evergreens, they are only sparingly introduced 

 into lawns or pleasure-grounds." 



Our friend is right. There is a lamentable poverty of evergreens 

 in the grounds of many country places in this country. Our planta- 

 tions are mostly deciduous ; and while there are thousands of per- 

 sons who plant, in this country, such trashy trees (chiefly fit for 

 towns) as the ailanthus, there is not one planter in a hundred but 

 contents himself with a few fir trees, as the sole representatives of 

 the grand and rich foliaged family of evergreens. 



They forget that, as summer dies, evergreens form the richest 

 back-ground to the kaleidoscope coloring of the changing autumn 

 leaves ; that in winter, they rob the chilly frost-king of his sternest 

 terrors ; that in spring, they give a southern and verdant character 

 to the landscape in the first sunny day, when not even the earliest 

 poplar or willow has burst its buds. 



Mere than this, to look at the useful as well as the picturesque, 

 they are the body guards the grenadiers the outworks and forti- 



