88 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



spaces in the ground-cover and among herbs and shrubs along the planting spaces in 

 the spring of 1907, in order that there might be a brilliant display of flowers during the 

 summer season. Contracts were made for rapid-growing vines, three to four feet long, 

 in 4-inch pots, for buildings, poles, fences, and other places. Native rhododendrons in 

 large numbers were secured for use about buildings and terraces, just before the opening 

 of the exposition, for in no other way was it possible to secure suitable foliage about build- 

 ings under construction. 



There was little ordinary bedding and little use of tender plants, excepting in pro- 

 tected interior courts. Little formal gardens were designed and executed, with edges of 

 California privet kept low like box, about the Arts and Crafts village, and filled with 

 flowers. In this village were a model school and school-gardens. In the spring of 1906 these 

 gardens were planted by eighty children, representatives of all the schools of the region 

 about Norfolk. 



Of course, one of the most important features of the grounds to which early atten- 

 tion was given was the street-tree planting. This, too, was begun early. Here again we 

 depended upon such trees as could be secured on the grounds and in the region near-by. 

 It was not thought advisable to move such trees as sweet gum, sour gum, and the tulip, 

 so we depended on pin oak, willow oak, water oak, red maple, flowering dogwood, cherry, 

 locust, and apple trees about the parade-grounds, with some paper mulberry. 



A year ago last winter (1903— 1904) one thousand five hundred trees were moved, 

 varying from four to twenty inches, a large number being from eight to twelve inches. 

 A very small percentage of these have failed, and such are being replaced this winter. 

 In our interior courts cedars were used. 



The cost of all this planting was extremely low. We were able to collect, at first, 

 Vinca major as low as thirty cents per thousand, mountain laurels from two to five feet 

 high, at $2.50 per hundred, and a large part of all our early shrub planting did not cost 

 over two cents apiece in places — ^this for shrubs averaging three to four feet in height. 

 There were surprisingly few failures in the shrub-planting. Many thousand herbs were 

 planted, but with a somewhat larger percentage of loss; among these were 80,000 Amaryllis 

 Atamasco, collected on the ground. 



In all the early work on the grounds we were fortunate in securing the hearty cooper- 

 ation of the Board of Governors of the exposition company, who never failed to recognize 

 the necessity of securing the most attractive conditions, and who carried out my recom- 

 mendations in regard to this work almost without question. 



So far as work on the grounds is concerned, the opportunity to establish nurseries 

 and to begin our permanent nurseries two years before the exposition, made it possible 

 to secure better results, especially so far as planting was concerned, than could possibly 

 have been secured if the work had been postponed, as so often occurs, until the last moment. 

 Furthermore, these conditions and the unusually favorable opportunities for collecting 

 made it possible to secure better plantations at very much less cost than, I believe, has 

 been possible at other expositions. 



