266 
“No finer things than the cedars can be 
within the view of the flower garden,” says 
William Robinson, ‘‘but they should never- 
be planted near the house, or their great 
branches will darken it and in small flower 
gardens they are sure to be in the way.” 
OUR EQUIVALENTS FOR THEIR SPRUCES 
Another conifer that will grow a hundred 
feet in a century is the Douglas spruce. 
Indeed, I saw one at Dropmore, 117 feet 
high, with a spread of 100 feet, which came 
from the first lot of seeds brought to England 
in the winter of 1827-28. This is the only 
hundred-foot conifer I have ever seen that 
has retained its symmetry. It is a perfect 
pyramid, the lower branches being all 
present and resting on the ground. 
The Douglas spruce illustrates a most 
important principle. The trees of western 
continental coasts are, broadly speaking, 
interchangeable and so are the trees of 
eastern continental coasts, but you cannot 
expect western trees to live long in an eastern 
country or eastern in a western. For 
example, England can grow the Douglas 
spruce and other gigantic conifers of the 
Pacific coast to perfection, and California 
can grow most of the European trees. Thus 
the Pacific coast, though socially related to 
us, is climatically akin to Europe. 
Again, the Californian form of the Douglas 
spruce is not hardy in the East, but its 
Colorado form is. We could wish that all 
the California conifers had been able to 
cross the Great Divide, so that the East 
might hope to have hardy forms of all 
these titanic trees. One should never buy 
Douglas spruces without inquiring whether 
they came from the California or Colorado 
stock. 
Botanically, the Douglas spruce belongs 
to a different genus (Pseudotsuga), but for 
b 
BS erage rere oe een PORTS Oe a, 
- 
A section of hemlock hedge in America viewed 
closely to show that it is our equivalent for a hedge 
of English yew 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
“But never has a grander personality made a 
poorer startin life. A young cedar of Lebanon is a 
tousled mass of harsh foliage having the texture 
of the larch ’’ 
landscape purposes it is a spruce. It is the 
best. spruce England can have, both for 
ornament and for timber. It will grow 
sixty feet in forty years in England, and 
occasionally three feet a year. 
The spruce on which America has wasted 
the most money (doubtless more than a 
million dollars in the past) is the Norway 
(Picea excelsa). ‘This is the blackest and 
gloomiest of conifers and the chief source 
of the notion (where it exists) that ever- 
greens are monotonous and depressing. 
One of our worst American traits is that 
we buy the things that are cheapest at first 
instead of cheapest in the end. The Norway 
spruce is the lowest priced conifer because 
it is the fastest grower and like nearly all 
other fast growers it is short-lived. It makes 
a splendid appearance in the nursery but 
soon gets shabby. The best dark-colored 
spruce that is always radiantly happy in our 
climate is the oriental (Picea orientalis). 
Our best native spruces are the white 
and Colorado (P.' alba and pungens). 
England cannot grow a good white spruce 
but she grows good Colorado spruces and 
has an important lesson to teach us about 
them. With us the Colorado spruce is 
the most popular of all evergreens, because 
it has the bluest and therefore the most 
conspicuous and unnatural color. Every 
yard has one, along with other curiosities, 
and we scatter them all over the place in an 
effort to make our grounds as different as 
possible from their environment. On the 
contrary we ought to plant chiefly the trees 
of our neighborhood, and America will never 
look happy and mellow until we do. More- 
over we ought never to isolate a Colorado 
spruce or any other conspicuous object, but 
use such things to ‘“‘spice” a composition. 
Precisely what I mean is shown by the 
picture on page 267. 
OUR EQUIVALENTS FOR THE ‘‘BIG TREES” 
How the soul of a Californian must 
rejoice when he sees a Sequoia gigantea 
JANUARY, 1909 
that has grown a hundred feet in fifty years! 
I saw one at Dropmore that was ninety- 
eight feet high and planted about 1860. 
The oldest specimens I have seen in the 
East are at Rochester and Dosoris, and they 
are ‘‘homelier than sin.” To tell the truth, 
the big tree is not beautiful in our gardens. 
The only equivalent of it we can have is 
Cryptomeria Japonica, the great timber 
tree of Japan. Both have a bunchy foliage 
effect which is produced by long strings, 
like those of the cypress or club moss. 
But even the Cryptomeria is hardy only as 
far north as New York, unless in sheltered 
positions, and this type of conifer is only 
for collections. We do not want it in our 
landscape. 
OUR EQUIVALENT FOR REDWOOD 
The big tree cannot hold a candle to the 
redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) save in 
height. The tallest big tree I know of is 
350 feet high; the tallest redwood 325. 
In England the redwood will grow a hundred 
feet in sixty years. I dare say I had read 
a hundred descriptions of the redwood, 
before I went to England, in a vain attempt 
to get a mental picture of it. Yet the essence 
of its beauty is ridiculously easy to tell. Its 
foliage effect is simply that of our common 
hemlock. Add to this a beautiful warm 
red bark and you have the whole story of 
its landscape value. 
Of course, these points are nothing com- 
pared with the enormous height of the red- 
wood. I don’t mean to say that any words 
of mine can convey the feelings one has at 
the first sight of a hundred-foot conifer, but 
the redwood is only one of many conifers 
that reach a hundred feet. The distinctive 
beauty of the redwood is the feathery grace 
of its foliage and this is produced in pre- 
cisely the same way as that of the hemlock, 
viz., by short, soft needles in two ranks. 
Hemlock is inferior in height and beauty 
of bark, but if we plant enough hemlocks 
we can make the East beautiful enough 
without sighing for sequoias. And our hem- 
lock England can never grow to perfection. 
There the tree splits into several trunks instead 
of maintaining a single leader as it does here. 
THEIR BEST FIR AND OURS 
England has no native fir (what is called 
the Scotch fir is a pine), but the common fir 
This picture might have been made in America, 
for the hedge effect is practically the same as that 
produced by hemlock, is it not? Yet this is the 
famous yew. 
