364 
The Garden Magazine, August, 1920 
west garden was built slowly on newly graded clay shale. The 
east garden happened around that Pear tree and the Mulberry 
and the Apricot I forgot to mention. 
It has been the desire to make pictures in plants from, and to, 
the rambling old house. Also, 1 have desired to grow and bloom 
the unusual plants and shrubs; and the folks at the Arnold Ar- 
boretum as well as my friends among the more expert nursery- 
men have helped in the realization. Climbing Roses hedged in 
the centre garden, the Barberries bound the whole place around, 
and a dwarf fruit garden — with an espalier for fun — came in due 
time. My plant appetite has included annuals and perennials, 
and my human hunger called for plenty of vegetables and 
fruit. 
So this is Breeze Hill, with a decade passed; and the time is 
here when 1 ruthlessly pull out as well as hopefully plant in. 
Not barbered, not extensive, not always neat, certainly not 
expensive, these gardens give me and mine Roses and Straw- 
berries, Peas and Pears, much pleasure and some perplexity. 
Now, too, 1 can feel that others share the pleasure, for there are 
no gates at the five entrances, and 1 welcome real plant lovers any 
time, all the time. They come; sometimes a garden friend, some- 
times the laundryman. Breeze Hill is a very democratic place! 
HOW THE EVERGREENS WINTERED 
N OW that the summer is 
here, and all growth 
maturing, one can properly 
estimate the ravages of the 
last winter on coniferous 
evergreens. At Breeze Hill 
the winter was seemingly 
waning before any damage 
occurred to them. Perhaps 
March did not itself accom- 
plish the harm, only serving 
to show it. At the end of 
February no hurt to the trees 
was apparent, while when 
April opened some of the 
family seemed to have been 
scorched as if bv flame. 
The old Arborvitaes — 
Thuya occidentalis — were 
hard hit, both in the hedge 
and among the isolated or 
“specimen” trees. The hurt 
was not regular, but inci- 
dental that is, out of each 
ten trees in the hedge, two 
or three were burned, and 
one tree on the lawn lost one 
of its three upstanding stems. 
The big Norway Spruces 
show no especial winter in- 
jury, though, as is their sorry 
custom, they are slowly 
dying, having in some forty 
years reached their limit of 
endurance of this climatic 
range. 
That heretofore weather- 
proof conifer, the Japanese 
Yew (Taxus cuspidata) sur- 
prised me. One spreading 
plant of it did not lose a 
single leaflet, nor was its deep and rich green modified in 
the least. Another, thirty feet away, had some tips browned 
a little, but was not seriously injured. The third, an upright 
and handsome specimen, had a full fourth bitten out of it, on 
the north side, and although I have given it special water treat- 
ment to the extent of many barrels, but little recovery is in sight, 
and the wood on the injured side has shriveled. 
A NEAR-BY Carolina Hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana) is injured 
on the same side, and nearly as much, while a smaller plant 
just a few feet away is uninjured. The northern Hemlock, T. 
canadensis, was not bothered, nor were any of the Pines. I hat 
lovely evergreen, Abies concolor, came through in one specimen 
without injury, while another was defoliated, but is recovering. 
I have, and highly prize, 
two Douglas Firs, one of the 
refined bluish form that 
makes the Colorado Blue 
Spruce seem like a tree 
bounder! Neither lost a leaf 
nor a twig, and both are in 
splendid vigor, with branches 
sweeping the ground. The 
White Spruce was uninjured, 
as also was the noble brachy- 
phylla Fir (Abies homolepis). 
Abies Fraseri shows just a 
little annoyance at a winter 
which made many marks. 
The so-called Japanese Um- 
brella Pine (Sciadopitys ver- 
ticillata) was wiped out. 
That beautiful evergreen, 
filling a place of its own and 
indispensable in a garden, 
the Pfitzer Juniper, took no 
notice of the terrors of Jack 
Frost. The other Junipers, 
both tall and dwarf, and their 
related “Cedars,” were unin- 
jured. The common White 
Spruce — not much of an ever- 
green in gardens, to be sure — 
showed no ill effects. 
N OW why were some coni- 
ferous evergreens in- 
jured and others uninjured? 
Why did they all pull through 
the zero temperatures, the ice 
encasement, and the bitter 
winds of January and Febru- 
ary, some of them as detailed 
above in Breeze Hill garden 
hitting hard luck in March? 
I do not know; does any one? I have been inquiring from 
all who think they know, and I get nowhere. One thoughtful 
investigator at a great university spent chilly hours in the open 
with his microscope, studying cell structure, at the time when 
he believed the injury was being accomplished. He was quite 
sure when he talked to me that he knew all about it, and that the 
injury occurred because, with the tree substance frozen so as to 
prevent the easy flow of the sap to supply continuous evapora- 
tion, the sudden shining of the winter sun demanded more of 
this sap than could be transpired, whereupon the cells either 
burst or burned. W hen 1 told him that all the injury to the 
Breeze Hill conifers was on the northwest side, away from the 
rays of that winter sun, his theory, so far as those trees were 
concerned, certainly burst! 
FEW EVERGREENS ARE AS LOVELY AND NONE ARE HARDIER 
The Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga Douglasii) exhausts superlatives 
since it is one of the tallest, most important; and most rapid grow- 
ing of Conifers as well as one of the most strikingly beautiful 
