May 



Garden and Forest. 



109 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY 1!Y 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



[ LIMITED.] 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 1888. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGF. 



Editorial Articles ; — American Cemeteries. — Plans for Small Places. — Cut 



Flowers and Growing Plants. — Notes 109 



Plan for^ Small Homestead (with two ilhistrations). .Fred'k Law Olitisied. 11 1 



Foreign Corresi'ON'DEN'CE :— London Letter William Goldring, 113 



New or Little Known Plants : — Hyinenocallis humilis [with illustration), 



Seriino Watson. 114 



Cultural Department : — Hybrid Aquilegias Josiah Hoopcs. 114 



Rhus cotinoides. — Heucliera santjuinea. — Myosotis dissitiilora splen- 

 dens. — Scmpervi\ urns. — " Dutch " Bulbs. — Spring Flowers. — Cutting 

 Asparagus. — Andromeda floribunda. — Pansies 114 



Effect of the Winter t>n Evergreens William Falconer . 115 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum J. G. jfack. 117 



The Forest: — The Forest Vegetation of Northern Me,\ico, IlL . . . C G. Fringle. 117 



Resin in the American White Pine Dr. H. Ulayr. 117 



Correspondence 118 



Recent Publications 119 



Periodical Literature 119 



Recent Plant Portraits 120 



Public Works : — Central Park 120 



Retail Flower Markets: — New York, Philadelphia, Boston 120 



Illustrations ; — Plan for a Small Homestead, Figs, i and 2 1 11 and 113 



Hvmenocaliis humilis, Fig. 23 114 



A Mesquit Forest in Arizona 116 



American Cemeteries. 



THERE is nothing- in this country to which foreign 

 writers give more praise than to our cemeteries. 

 The student of social customs sees in them one of the 

 cliief proofs we give of genuine sentiment on tlie one hand 

 and wise sanitary foresight on the other ; and the student 

 of art and nature sees in tliem our most characteristic 

 and best achievements in the art of landscape gardening. 

 Their size, their park-like arrangement, their remoteness 

 from the local centres of population, and the care and 

 neatness with which they are kept, are held up to foreign 

 communities as points in which they would do vi'ell to 

 imitate us. Certainly, as contrasted with the formal, 

 walled-in, crowded, dreary, sun-baked or weed-grown 

 cemeteries seen in most foreign lands, ours deserve 

 much praise. But they are not what they ought to be. 

 Excellent in intention, they are too often bad in e.xecution. 

 No e.xpenditure of mone)'', pains or skill is wanting, but in 

 directing this expenditure we too often make grievous 

 errors. 



The cause of these errors, as one of our contributors has 

 recently pointed out, is that we do not abide by the gen- 

 eral idea with which the place was set aside for this special 

 service. The characteristic feature of American cemeteries 

 is that they are rural, no matter how large may be the 

 communities for which they serve. But this characteristic 

 we do our best to conceal or destroy. Nature is asked to 

 take our dead in charge, and then we do a thousand things 

 to ruin the repose, the sanctity and beauty which she is 

 ready to provide. Too many and too prominent roads 

 and walks are made, giving the cemetery the aspect of a 

 place for pleasure promenades rather than for the retire- 

 ment of those whose dead it holds. We take pains to 

 make ample allowance of space to each purchaser of 

 ground, partly that for his sake the graves shall not be too 

 closely crowded and partly that they shall not destroy the 

 unity and repose of the landscape. And then we often nul- 



lify our efforts by enclosing the lots with heavy railings 

 and'by building huge and showy monuments. We think 

 we want a natural landscape, and then we plant the ceme- 

 tery — not the private lots alone, but the parts which have 

 been preserved intact for the sake of landscape beauty — 

 with tropical plants, formal beds of gaudy flowers, and rib- 

 bon-patterns, borders, and endless puerile devices, wrought 

 with bright-foliaged plants, which only support our cli- 

 mate a few weeks or months and then disappear, leaving 

 dreary nakedness behind. In short, we lose sight of the main 

 purpose for which the cemetery was designed, fail to keep 

 any general idea or scheme in mind, and instead of a rural 

 burial-ground produce something which is a meaningless, 

 unnatural and essentially vulgar compound of a cemetery, 

 a park, a horticultural exhibition and a collection of works 

 of architecture and sculpture. And this we do by means 

 of a vast waste of pains and money. No one who has 

 not inquired into such matters can imagine what it costs 

 to plant out year by year the exotics which are supposed 

 to adorn our cemeteries, and to winter them from one year 

 to another. Few realize the degree to which cemetery 

 companies now compete with one another in this direc- 

 tion, bidding for public patronage by means of costly hor- 

 ticultural establishments and verbose advertisements of 

 their horticultural resources and achievements. All this is 

 wrong — wrong from the point of view of good sense, from 

 the point of view of true sentiment, and from the point of 

 view of art. The true ideal for the making of an American 

 cemeter)'-, whether large or small, is this : That spot should 

 be selected of which the natural charms are greatest in 

 direction of peacefulness and the harmony which means 

 variety in unity. Its features should be as carefully pre- 

 served as possible in laying out the walks and drives, 

 which should not be more numerous than actually required 

 for purposes of burial and of visiting the graves. Such 

 planting as is needful should be done in a way to com- 

 plete the existing beauty, and accentuate, not disturb, the 

 natural character of the spot. Costly exotics should not 

 be introduced, no showy tlower-beds allowed, no formal 

 arrangements of planting of any kind permitted. They 

 are out of keeping alike with the kind of beauty that is 

 desired and with the spirit in which a cemetery is properly 

 visited. Owners of lots should not be allowed to surround 

 them with railings. They are palpably useless ; they arc 

 glaringly injurious to unity and repose of effect ; they 

 serve merely to display proprietorship, and nothing can 

 be in worse taste than such a display in such a place. 

 Owners should be encouraged, too, to make their monu- 

 ments not only as artistic, but as simple and unobtrusive 

 as possible. Only a great man, one to whose grave 

 future generations are likely to make pilgrimages, is en- 

 titled to have his resting place conspicuously inarked ; 

 and even he does not need that it should be thus marked. 

 Something which will indicate where a body lies and 

 whose body it is, while disturbing as little as possible the 

 unity and peacefulness of the scene — this is what a grave- 

 stone should be. It is needless to say that color as well as 

 form should be considered with this fact in mind. Granite 

 is the best possible, our favorite white marble the worst 

 possible, material for cemetery monuments ; and a flat 

 slab is preferable to a vertical shaft or stone. If large 

 boulders chance to be strewn over the ground nothing is 

 more appropriate for monuments, a simple inscription 

 being cut upon a space made smooth for the purpose, 

 while the rest of the moss-grown or vine-covered surface re- 

 mains in its natural condition. Owners should be restrained 

 in their desire to plant showy flowers about the graves — 

 should be taught that it is not justifiable for them to 

 indulge their p'ersonal wishes in this way if they conflict 

 with the greatest good of the greatest number as pro- 

 vided for "in the peaceful unity of aspect that the ceme- 

 tery as a whole should have. And finally, while the cem- 

 etery should be carefully kept and tended, there must be 

 no e\'ident straining after excessive finish as the most 

 desirable of all quali"ties in all portions of the grounds. 



