August, 19 lo 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



329 



Garden Notes 



Conducted by Charles Downing Lay 



PUBLIC spirited citizen in a small Rhode 

 Island town writes to the editor of "Gar- 

 den Notes" for advice about their old 

 cemetery, which is now, he says, "in a dis- 

 tressing state, with overturned stones on 

 which the inscriptions are half obliterated, 

 tangles of all sorts of bushes, innumerable 

 weeds, fallen trees and holes where stones have been dug 

 out. The fences are falling down, happily some of the iron 

 ones are broken beyond repair." 



It may be that the village improvement society in your 

 town will take hold of it as was done in Ridgefield. The 

 conditions there were somewhat as you describe when money 

 was raised to put the cemetery in order, and now it is in a 

 pleasing state of upkeep. I quote from the report on that 

 cemetery : 



"It is unnecessary to recite the details of disorder and 

 neglect which I have found in the old cemetery in Ridgefield. 



"They are as apparent and perhaps as distressing to 

 everyone as they are to me, and need not be considered in 

 this report, except as a particular disorder calls for radical 

 changes. 



"The care of old burying grounds is becoming a problem 

 in many communities. Few interments are made in them 

 now, either because the lots are filled or because the families 

 which owned them have died out or have moved away. . 



"There are no funds for their maintenance as in the 

 modern, privately owned cemeteries, and each lot is sup- 

 posed to be taken care of by its owner; an erroneous sup- 

 position as the forlorn state of many of the lots shows. 



"Their future is in doubt. They are not consecrated 

 ground to be used over and over as in England, and once 

 filled their only use is as memorials to the dead. 



"It does not seem right or necessary to turn them into 

 public parks, yet they should have some aesthetic and in- 

 tellectual value to the living. 



"A decent respect for the dead would suggest that they 

 be made as beautiful as possible, and that they be kept al- 

 ways as places for quiet communion with the past. 



"The headstones in the oldest part of the cemetery 

 should be preserved as long as may be, but when the in- 

 scriptions become effaced by time, no attempt should be 

 made to recut them, but they should be taken away. In the 

 course of another hundred years perhaps there will be no 

 stones left and the old part of the cemetery will give ample 

 space for the memorial services of whatever kind that take 

 place there. 



"The records of the stones are, of course, valuable and 

 should be preserved by rubbings kept in the town hall or 

 library. A careful map of the cemetery with each grave 

 marked and numbered to correspond with the number of its 

 rubbing would be a further means of identification. When 

 this is done the stones themselves are not so important. 

 They are less durable than the rubbings. 



"The next important work is removing the mounds over 

 graves which have no stones remaining, and filling holes 

 where rocks have been taken out. This means a general 

 tidying up and after that the old trees should be gone over, 

 cutting out the dead wood and filling holes that are not too 

 large; then the planting can be undertaken. 



"If any of the lots are abandoned they might be planted 

 as samples, or permission might be obtained from owners 

 to plant their lots according to the schemes of the society. 

 Thus there might be sample lots showing in a general way 

 what would be done for a fixed sum. This would help lot 

 owners to decide about planting their own lots — which they 

 might in the end be glad to have the improvement society 

 do. 



"My idea in planting the old part of the cemetery is that 

 the place should be shady but not gloomy. More trees, 

 mostly oaks and a few white pines and white birches, should 

 be planted far enough apart to grow as individuals. 



"There should also be many dog woods, silver bell trees, 

 shad bush, white fringe and red cedars scattered about. All 

 these are permanent trees, which will be in their prime long 

 after this and the next generation or two have passed. 



"Nowhere should the trees be thick and nowhere do we 

 want a tangle of trees and shrubs. 



"Myrtle can be grown in patches and lily of the valley 

 and the poets narcissus and other spring bulbs can be scat- 

 tered on the knolls. English ivy and the evergreen Enony- 

 mus can be planted on the old trees. For shrubs I should 

 recommend only the broad-leaved evergreens which grow 

 slowly and last many years: Andromeda, rhododendrons 

 in three hardly varieties, laurel, leiophyllum, etc., planted 

 singly or in groups of two or three as the space may war- 

 rant. 



"Fifty dollars spent every year in this way for planting 

 would soon change the appearance of the place so that in 

 time it would become one of the real beauties of the town 

 instead of an eye sore as it now is. 



"There Is no waste in planting of this sort and it is last- 

 ing and cheap to maintain, though the first cost may be 

 great." 



The iron fences around lots had better be thrown away 

 and the boundary fences of the cemetery rebuilt. 



A good stone wall is always one of the nicest and most 

 durable of fences, particularly if it be laid on a good founda- 

 tion and of course if it be laid in cement mortar it should 

 last forever. 



It would be a great pity to make a grand splurge with an 

 expensive fence and not to have enough money left to im- 

 prove and maintain the grounds inside — a simple fence with 

 the most perfect maintenance Inside would be better. 



Rubbings are made on rather thin manila wrapping paper, 

 which Is laid on top of the stone. The paper is then 

 blackened all over with a wax marking crayon. Letters cut 

 in the stone show white on a black background. 



