134 The American Flower Garden 



plished by intelligent tree planting. And nothing about a home 

 fosters quite so much sentiment as a tree. 



" Let dead names be eternised in dead stone, 

 But living names by living shafts be known: 

 Plant thou a tree whose leaves shall sing 

 Thyself and thee each fresh, recurring spring." 



It is a pleasant custom for each member of the family and the 

 dearest of the family's friends to set out trees on the home grounds. 

 To right-thinking people they stand for something far finer than so 

 much nursery stock. In public parks trees are planted by dis- 

 tinguished men who visit the city and often acquire historic value 

 as the years go by. A patriotic citizen recently paid over a thou- 

 sand dollars to an expert to prolong the life of the splendid old 

 "Liberty Tree" at Annapolis by pruning it, chiselling out the 

 decayed wood, filling its enormous cavities with tons of cement, 

 and supplying the exhausted soil around it with fresh nourishment. 

 Sentiment persists in clinging to a tree like moss to its bark. 



From the practical and the pictorial points of view we have 

 been slow in learning that the evergreens, as a class, are the most 

 useful. We shall never be able to live out of doors the greater 

 part of the year, as the Europeans live in their gardens, until the 

 value of trees that keep their leaves all winter is far more generally 

 recognised. The old gardens of Italy are not only the most 

 beautiful in the world, but the most comfortable at all seasons, 

 because trees and shrubs that are permanently green and shelter- 

 ing are their basis. And yet, with a far greater variety of them at 

 our disposal than any Old World garden maker had four centuries 

 ago, we are only just beginning to utilise them as we might for 

 wind-breaks, screens, and hedges. Of course, trees with dense 

 foliage should never be set out in the path of the prevailing summer 



