Mav 



Garden and Forest. 



H/ 



Roadside Beaut\-. 



WHEN this part of the country was first settled a rail 

 fence, half a mile long, was built on the line be- 

 tween two neighbors. This was renewed by pieces and 

 remained the barrier between the two farms for thirty- 

 five years. These men were not representatives of the 

 highest type of snug, thrifty farmers. They were tree 

 slayers and bared their acres of everything that stood in 

 the way of the plow or mowing machine. But along this 

 line fence they stored the stumps and stone and other rub- 

 bish that impeded their work, and bushes and young trees 

 soon sprang up. The row of wild growth became a 

 grand place for Raspberries and Blackberries when I was 

 a lad, and the regular harvest of Hazel Nuts came from the 

 same thicket. It was a famous place, too, for rabbits and 

 squirrels, partridges and quails to hide in. 



But a new set of landholders came in to revolu- 

 tionize the neighborhood. A few tree lovers set- 

 tled here and my father was one. He bought the 

 farm on one side of the line hedge and another pro- 

 gressive farmer bought the adjoining one. A highway 

 was laid out on this half mile of line ; the tv^'o thrifty 

 farmers cleared out the old fence, burned up and hauled 

 away the rubbish, and with pruning implements weeded 

 out the useless and carefully saved the most promising 

 trees in the greatest possible variety, the different Oaks, 

 the wild Black Cherry, and the Elms predominating. They 

 were left in groups, no effort being made to save trees at 

 regular intervals. These trees grew rapidly, and a fine 

 road-bed was made on either side. It is, to-day, the most 

 beautiful half mile of road in all our county, the pride of 

 every one who loves a tree or appreciates natural beauty. 



But the race of vandals is not extinct. Land became 

 valuable and was bought up by speculators who were 

 anxious to cut the acres into small lots and get rich. They 

 wanted to "improve" the neighborhood and "make it 

 attractive." They sought to widen the highway for a 

 mile and a half, including this half mile, and make it into a 

 " boulevard, " with a wide road-bed in the centre, a side- 

 walk on the borders, and rows of trees on either margin, 

 "the way they do in Chicago." I objected mildly, upon 

 the general plea of "no cause." They pressed harder and 

 extolled the beauty and grandeur of a generous boulevard, 

 with every undulation taken out of it, and a grand Ameri- 

 can Elm on either side once in sixty feet. They pictured 

 the noble residences that would be erected on its borders 

 and the delight with which they would grub out that un- 

 sightly, irregular, obstructive row of trees, and have no 

 break in the road-way from end to end. I became impa- 

 tient, wanting none of their improvements, caring little for 

 a view of fine residences on forty-foot lots, with an own- 

 ership of two-thirds of a dead Elm tree planted in front. 



Of course I was set down as lacking in public spirit and 

 obstructing intelligent progress. 



Surely it is not true progress to lay out every suburban 

 highway on some Metropolitan model and take all the 

 individuality out of a neighborhood. Refined taste does 

 not commend the obliteration of all native and natural 

 beauty, to make room for some formal scheme of an en- 

 gineer's devising. 



We cannot have trees, shrubs and vines on the business 

 streets of a city, and get any satisfaction out of them, but 

 on our highways, in the suburbs, there is no reason why 

 these untamed graces may not only be preserved and 

 protected, but rendered more attractive by delicate atten- 

 tion. This may be small work for a landscape gardener, 

 but it is good work for some kind of an artist, who not 

 only appreciates Nature, but is willing to adopt some of 

 her methods in rendering beautiful the surroundings of 

 homes that have not the advantage of park-like grounds 

 or magnificent distances. 



Many of the most attractive highways in our State owe 

 their beauty to the shiftlessness of the pioneers, who al- 

 lowed a mass of bushes to grow up in the corners of the 



old worm fences undisturbed for a generation ; afterward 

 to be utilized by their more thrifty successors in the embel- 

 lishment of the roadsides. No plantations formed by man 

 are equal in beauty to these irregular masses of trees that 

 are of Nature's planting. 



Occasionally I note an example of the workings of some 

 man's mathematical mind, who has tried to clear out one 

 of these rows, leaving a tree once in so many feet, and 

 thus ruining the effect for all time. No one can pass 

 along a highway fringed with one of these wild borders 

 without a feeling of gratitude to those easy-going settlers 

 who allowed Nature to do what she could to compensate 

 for man's wholesale destruction of forest beauty, which 

 was a necessary sacrifice, perhaps, to advancing civiliza- 

 tion. 



We need not be sentimentalists of the kind that refuse 

 to destroy a tree that has passed its usefulness, or that 

 stands as an obstruction in a cultivated field, but we 

 should have a wholesome respect for Nature's attempts to 

 beautify the waste places of the earth, and especially for 

 the way-side shrubbery, which gives attractiveness to the 

 roads we all travel and ought to enjoy. 



Grand Rapids, Michigan. C/iclS. W. GurfielJ. 



The Two Types of Cemeteries. 



AS a matter of design, burial places are of two distinct 

 types of character — the architectural or formal, and 

 the rural or picturesque. 



The Campos Santos of most Latin countries are instances, 

 though often deplorably poor ones, of the formal type. 

 Most of the larger cemeteries of this country are instances 

 of the rural type. 



It must not be thought, because we are most accustom- 

 ed to the rural cemetery, that it is the only good kind, and 

 that the formally designed place of burial is foreign, anti- 

 (piated, puerile, and in every way undesirable. The truth 

 is that each type has merits of its own. Both should be 

 had in mind when it is proposed to create a new cemetery, 

 and all the special conditions of the case should be well 

 considered and the decision as to which to adopt should 

 be made according to the balance of advantages. 



Cemeteries of the formal type may well be adopted in 

 districts where the soil is too poor, the climate too hot and 

 dry, or too cold and bleak, for the successful growing of 

 trees, shrubs and turf; or where the available area is very 

 limited in proportion to the number of burials to be ex- 

 pected ; or, what comes to much the same thing, where 

 the land is excessively costly ; or where the tastes, habits, 

 knowledge and skill of the people strongly incline them to 

 work out more artistic results in architecture than in land- 

 scape gardening. The architectural or formal style lends 

 itself to the multiplication of large and costly monuments 

 as well as small and modest memorials, each vs'ith some 

 individuality, but forming part of a comprehensive design, 

 the scope of which may range from a geometrical, garden- 

 like court, to a great building of the most monumental and 

 dignified character, or from a city block to a great wood 

 with formal alleys and vistas running through it. The 

 principle admits of uniting the highest achievements of 

 architects, sculptors, painters, and other artists, with the 

 most skillful gardening- and the most choice trees and 

 shrubs, into one rich, harmonious and satisfactory whole. 



As, however, the fashion of making cemeteries in what 

 is intended to be the rural style has become firmly estab- 

 lished in this country, through the existence in parts of it 

 of favorable conditions, a few suggestions as to that style 

 will be of more practical interest than a further discussion 

 of what may be accomplished in the formal style. As one 

 of the results of the increased thought which has, of late 

 years, been given to the high arts and to those of architec- 

 ture, interior decoration and furnishing, a sentiment has be- 

 gun to spread among us of dissatisfaction with the ap- 

 pearance of many of our noted rural cemeteries. 



