June i, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



253 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY HY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C- S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CI-ASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW VOKK, N. V. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JUNE i, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



EuiTORiAL Artici.ks : — Good Taste in Our Cemeteries 253 



The Florists' Shops in Berlin 2=;4 



The White Oak at Shandy Hall, Maryland. (With figure.) 354 



Mid-May in West Virginia lifrs. Danskc Dandridgc. 254 



A Sequence of Flowering Cherries J. G. yack. 255 



New or Little-known Plants : — Asarum Crux-Andrte. (With figure.). .C. S. S. 256 



New Orchids ..R. A, Rolfe. 256 



Plant Notes : — Some Recent Portraits 257 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 257 



Cultural Department :— Bulbous Irises Professor M. Foster. 258 



Rock-garden Notes R. Cameron. 260 



Roses W, H. Taplin. 260 



I'he Cultivation ot Blackberries and Raspberries E. P. Poivetl. 260 



Insecticides and Fungicides in the Orchard T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 261 



Some Vegetable Notes Professor W, F. Massey. 261 



The Forest: — Forest E.Yperiment Station at Santa Monica. .. /^rrtiw^- ^/. Galtahcr. 262 



Recent Publications 263 



Notes 263 



Illustrations: — Asarum Crux-Andrte, Fig 49 257 



White Oak (Quercus alba) at Sliandy Hall, Maryland, Fig. 50 259 



Good Taste in Our Cemeteries. 



WE spoke last week of the views of certain prominent 

 American cemetery superintendents, as expressed 

 at the last meeting of their association, with regard to the 

 aspect which our rural cemeteries should wear. We quoted 

 their own words to show that their ideal of a cemetery is a 

 simple, peaceful place in which a natural, rather than an 

 artificial, type of beauty has been secured ; a place not 

 crowded with costly and showy monuments or rendered 

 garish by gaudy flower-beds ; a place neatly kept, although 

 not trimmed and polished into the semblance of a pub- 

 lic park or a private garden. And we said that, according 

 to their witness, this ideal would be more often attained 

 were it not for opposition to the plans of superintendents 

 on the part of their employers. 



This opposition was not dwelt upon in any carping or 

 militant spirit by any of the speakers ; but all the addresses 

 clearly suggested it as a thing which need not be dwelt 

 upon because already so generally recognized as the chief 

 bar to the improvement of the average American cemetery. 

 Here and there we find in the report of the speeches a more 

 definite statement, as, for instance, with regard to the 

 " jirevailing anxiety" of lot-owners to "coinpete with each 

 other" in the erection of conspicuous, ugly monuments; 

 and, again, with regard to the popular demand that flowers 

 be planted "profusely," and the difficulty in meeting 

 specialized desires of this sort — of having any assurance 

 that the flowers will be planted artistically rather than 

 ridiculously. 



" When we have said all we can," remarked one super- 

 intendent, " there still remains the fact that the public are 

 the patrons of every cemetery association. The public, 

 consisting of many men of many minds, to their wishes 

 and desires we must all, to a great extent, conform. We 

 may denounce pathways, stone-work, flowers, shrubs and 

 borders, and lay down methods of burial and selling of 



lots, and advocate perpetual care, but we cannot adopt any 

 hard and fast line of refusal or enforce arbitrary rules ; 

 even by-laws have occasionally to be overlooked to satisfy 

 the public." And another speaker drew a picture of the 

 appearance of a cemetery to which he was appointed, 

 which has, we think, a certain typical significance. " Every 

 lot-holder," he said, "had been permitted to plant and 

 decorate as he desired. To add to this, seedling and vol- 

 unteer growth abounded, and the management was per- 

 meated with the sentiment of 'Woodman, spare that tree.' 

 lieceptacles for flowers of every iinaginable construction — 

 iron, wood, tin, glass, china— the greater number of them 

 unfit for any other purpose, were considered just the thing 

 for decorating the cemetery-lot. No unifonnity of grade 

 existed, some lots being high, some low ; there \mqx<i big 

 mounds and little mounds, and many of them transformed, 

 becoming depressions in the ground, and many of them 

 selfishly enclosed with several hundred iron railings in 

 various conditions of neglect. ... In one day I swept off 

 the lots six great cart-loads of conch-shells and their con- 

 tents. In the ideal cemetery," continued this speaker, 

 " there are no paths nor space laid out for walks. The 

 boundaries of the lots are out of sight — no posts, no foot- 

 stones, no head-stones, no mounds to designate a grave, 

 but a succession of beautiful lawns broken only by a single 

 monument upon a lot The irregularly shaped lots allow 

 space for the planting of trees in groups and single speci- 

 mens and the arranging of flowering shrubs for foliage 

 effects." 



The contrast between these two pictures is instructive, 

 and shows pretty fairly what a rural cemetery often is 

 when controlled by the taste of the community and what 

 it may be if really controlled by such superintendents as 

 are now available. To some readers the ideal picture may 

 seem exaggerated. No person of taste will insist that the 

 boundaries of lots should be conspicuously marked, that 

 graves or the borders of lots should be turned into crazy- 

 quilts of flowers, or that monuinents should be so numerous 

 and striking that the cemetery will look more like a marble 

 yard than a place of eternal repose. But to limit owners 

 to a single monument in each lot may seem to be an ex- 

 aggeration of the desire for a "natural" effect. In truth, it 

 is not desirable that the true character of a cemetery should 

 be so carefully concealed that it might be taken for a park 

 or an uncultivated piece of nature. Itought, of course, to look 

 like a burial ground, although like a simple, quiet, peaceful, 

 unostentatious burial ground. And, if monuments are kept 

 of small size and are designed in simple yet artistic ways, 

 there is no reason why lot-owners should each be limited 

 to one. There is, however, a good reason for doing away 

 with those grave-mounds to which traditional sentiment 

 so strongly clings. In the first place, they are constant 

 temptations to the introduction of floral ornamentation of 

 too striking and gaudy and, at the same time, too ephemeral 

 a sort. And, in the second place, if they are covered with 

 turf, it is hard to keep them and their immediate surround- 

 ings neat. Labor is so costly in this country that the lawn- 

 mower must be the chief if not the only aid toward neat- 

 ness in the lawns. And mounds over which the lawn-mower 

 cannot pass are almost sure to be detrimental to the gen- 

 eral effect of a cemetery. So it also is, of course, with 

 boundary stones around the lots ; even if they are kept so 

 low that they do not unpleasantly affect the eye, it is im- 

 possible properly to cut the grass around them. 



In general, the ideas of this Association of Superinten- 

 dents, as expressed by the chief speakers at their last 

 meeting, seem worthy of cordial endoi'sement ; and we 

 feel with them, not only upon their evidence but also upon 

 that of our own observation, that the chief thing now to be 

 accomplished is the education of the public taste in such 

 matters. The taste of many superuitendents is evidently 

 far in advance of that of their patrons, and it is probable 

 that even those whose taste is still on a level with this 

 would quickly meet the wishes of their patrons should 

 these take a better direction. No person in charge of a 



