194 



Garden and Forest. 



[April 24, 1889. 



est growth, and which have hitherto reproduced and main- 

 tained it. In such cases as we have considered the owner 

 might almost as well have girdled his trees at once. 



The first great improvement in rural cemeteries was 

 made when the bounds between lots were abolished and 

 the so-called " lawn-system " was adopted. In the earliest 

 rural cemeteries, like Mt. Auburn, each owner of a lot was 

 allowed to surround it with such a fence or hedge or stone 

 curbing as suited his fancy. But the boundary-wall of- 

 fered nearly as good an opportunity for the display of pre- 

 tentiousness and individual bad taste as the mortuary 

 monument itself, and cemeteries were converted into 

 stone-yards, to which lavish horticultural expenditure gave 

 no effect of rural restfulness or sanctity. The evil, like 

 many others of the kind, cured itself in time ; and now in 

 all cemeteries where modern notions prevail no lot is sold 

 without the special provision that the purchaser cannot in 

 any way define its boundaries except by corner-stones 

 sunk below the surface of the ground. The monument, 

 however, remained, and as wealth increased, developed 

 from year to year into a more hideous inappropriateness 

 and vulgarity ; and it became evident that without some 

 active control in such matters on the part of the managers 

 of cemeteries, they must fail in those very directions 

 where, it was believed, American burial-grounds were 

 better than those of any other country. 



There is in Brookline, Massachusetts, a small rural 

 cemetery belonging to the town, and governed by a Board 

 of Trustees elected by the people. These Trustees, it ap- 

 pears, have taken the lead in instituting a much-needed 

 reform by prescribing the manner in which monuments 

 can be erected in this cemetery. They have had a num- 

 ber of different designs for simple gravestones made by 

 a skillful architect, and if a person wishes to buy a lot he 

 can do so only upon the condition that he will select one 

 of these designs, or if none of them suit his taste, that he 

 will submit some other to be approved by the Trustees. 



The idea that underlies this system is the same which 

 has done away with prominent bounds. It is the idea 

 that no individual lot-owner has the right to do anything 

 on his lot which will injure the aspect of the cemetery as 

 a whole. The Brookline Trustees have further declared, 

 on the same principle, that no monument or headstone of 

 white marble shall in future be erected in the cemetery ; 

 they regulate for the general good, the selection, by lot- 

 owners, of plants, baskets and other decorations ; and dis- 

 courage expensive architectural tombs. There is no extrav- 

 agant horticultural establishment connected with the Brook- 

 line Cemetery; no beds of glaring flowers, no novel or mis- 

 shapen trees, no attempts at display. It relies for its at- 

 tractiveness upon natural woods carpeted with wild flow- 

 ers, native shrubs and well-kept lawns bordered here and 

 there by noble masses of natural rocks, after the striking 

 feature of much New England scenery. 



The idea of controlling the character of monuments in a 

 cemetery is so novel, and indicates such a long step for- 

 ward in the right direction, that we have obtained from 

 the Board of Trustees the permission to reproduce, for the 

 benefit of the pubhc, and more especially for the benefit 

 of the Trustees and managers of other cemeteries, the se- 

 lection of their designs which appear upon later pages of 

 this issue. 



Hardy Deciduous Shrubs. 



IDERSONS who have not given direct attention to the matter 

 -^ rarely appreciate the richness and variety of the flora of 

 our Atlantic States in trees and shrubs. One can hardly walk 

 a mile over a road in any hilly section of these States where the 

 waysides have been left with any liberty to clothe themselves 

 with vegetation, without passing at least twenty species of trees 

 and as many, perhaps, of shrubs. We have in mind a short 

 water-course in northern New Jersey where a little brook, rising 

 in apiece of springy upland, hurries down across three pasture- 

 lots to unite with a larger stream in the meadows. At one 



point a rather steep bank rises from the brook to a height of 

 thirty or forty feet, and along this bank for a dozen rods the 

 trees and shrubs have been left to grow. Further down there 

 is a little swamp, but elsewhere all is open grazing land, with 

 single trees scattered sparsely over the fields and along the 

 fences, or drooping over the brook. A visitor recently fol- 

 lowed this little stream from its source to where it empties 

 into the larger one, a distance of less than half a mile, and 

 counted thirty species of trees. Here is the list : Tulip-tree, 

 Basswood, Red Maple, Sugar Maple, Black Cherry, Wild 

 Plum, Scarlet Thorn, Juneberry, Flowering Dogwood, White 

 Ash, Black Ash, Sassafras, White Elm, Slippery Elm, Mul- 

 berry, Black Walnut, Butternut, Shagbark Hickory, Pignut 

 Hickory, White Oak, Scarlet Oak, Black Oak, Pin Oak, Chest- 

 nut, Beech, Hop Hornbeam, Ironwood, Sweet Birch, Aspen, 

 Smooth Alder and White Willow, the last a naturalized 

 foreigner. As many kinds of shrubs and woody vines could," 

 no doubt, be named, and perhaps a dozen other species of 

 trees could be found within a radius of a mile, among them 

 the White Pine, the Pitch Pine, the Hemlock Spruce and the 

 Red Cedar. 



This list is not quoted to prove the exceptional richness of 

 this locality in species of deciduous trees and shrubs. There 

 are places among the mountains of North Carolina, for exam- 

 ple, where many more could be found. But the small num- 

 ber of coniferous trees, when compared with the others, is 

 worth considering. Except in a few favored locations the ratio 

 between the number of conifers and broad-leaved evergreens, 

 on the one hand, and the number of deciduous trees and 

 shrubs on the other, is very small throughout the central and 

 northern Altantic States. This would seem to indicate that 

 plantations should be largely composed of deciduous trees and 

 shrubs. On our Pacific coast, conifers form a much larger 

 proportion of the forest-growth, and in England, where the 

 climatic conditions approach those of our Pacific states more 

 nearly than they do those on this side of the continent, conif- 

 erous trees and broad-leaved evergreen shrubs are among the 

 most conspicuous ornaments of the garden. It was natural 

 that the earliest attempts at gardening in this country should 

 have followed Enghsh models, and, as a matter of fact, many 

 gardens in this country have fallen into premature decay be- 

 cause they were largely planted with conifers and evergreens, 

 which have proved sickly and short-lived in our climate. 



But because our hot summer suns and icy winters and long, 

 dry autumns are unfavorable to this class of plants, there is 

 compensation in the fact that these are just the conditions 

 which enable deciduous shrubs to make a strong, healthy 

 growth, to ripen their wood well, to bear flowers and fruit in 

 abundance and to develop into a beauty which they can never 

 attain under the soft, moist airs and equable temperature of 

 western Europe. Not only are our native shrubs beautiful at 

 all seasons, but there is hardly a day in the year when a gar- 

 den composed of them exclusively would not wear some special 

 attraction. Along the brook referred to at the beginning of this 

 article, the bright fruit scarcely falls from the Black Alders be- 

 fore the Spicewood is in bloom. Flower follows flower all 

 summer, and the wild Roses are sdll opening when the au- 

 tumn colors begin to kindle in the foliage of the Sumachs. 

 Even when the leaves are gone the Witch Hazel is covered 

 with blossoms. If we add to such local groups the treasures 

 of our colder northern woods and of the southern Alleghenies 

 we can begin to understand how rich and varied a garden 

 could be made from native shrubs alone. And, again, it can- 

 not be too often repeated that for a combination of good qual- 

 ities no small trees can be found in all the world to excel our 

 Dogwoods, Viburnums, Thorns, Sumachs, Fringe-tree and 

 several others. In foliage, flower and fruit ; in form, habit 

 and autumn color they make so effective an addition to the 

 shrubs that we find no occasion to envy the gardens of Eng- 

 land for their superiority in conifers. 



But this is not all. Deciduous shrubs from other countries 

 flourish here as well as our own. The trees of Europe, as a rule, 

 do not thrive here, but the shrubs of Europe and those that 

 have been produced in European gardens are readily estab- 

 lished here, while those from eastern Asia and Japan can be 

 found in every door-yard. Indeed, the Forsythias, the Spir- 

 aeas, the Flowering Quinces, the Mock Orange, the Lilacs, the 

 Snow-balls, the Tartarean Honeysuckles, the Weigelas, the 

 Deutzias, the Rose of Sharon — the shrubs most commonly 

 planted — are all of foreign origin, and among those recently 

 introduced into cultivafion are many quite as interesting as 

 those of established reputafion. Pracfically the number to 

 choose from is almost limifless. In the Arnold Arboretum 

 more than 1,200 species and varieties of shrubs are now grow- 

 ing, and further south a still larger collection could be gath- 



