PARK AND CEMETERY. 
I8d 
vailed, and the festooning was of airy as- 
paragus. The Prince’s table stood forth in 
a shower of sprays of golden orchids (On- 
cidium varicosum) set in Farleyense ferns. 
Killarney roses were the center pieces on 
the other seventy tables. American Beauty 
roses alone decorated the great ball room. 
Riding along the main driveways or ave- 
nues we were impressed with the seeming- 
ly endless number of splendid residences 
set back in spacious grounds thickly wood- 
ed towards the street, and where the trees 
were not enough to give them privacy, high 
thick hedges were used, also vine covered 
walls and fences. Our principal peeps into 
these grounds were at the entrance ways 
and over the hedges. But the lawns or 
gardens fronting the sea were open. As 
the roads and street drives are oiled they 
were free from dust. 
It is occasionally asked, What trees and 
shrubs will thrive by the seaside? New- 
port answers this. Any kind of tree or 
shrub that will thrive inland will prosper 
along the seacoast providing it has shelter 
from prevailing fierce winds and salt water 
spray. 
First, let us note the trees. Many of 
these Newport gardens, old and new, were 
designed by eminent landscape gardeners 
who knew no stint of money, hence it is 
that the grouping and massing as well as 
isolated specimens are oftentimes composed 
of rare and expensive plants. English oaks 
are frequent, purple, fernleaved and plain 
European beeches prevail, but the Ameri- 
can one* is seldom seen; American bass- 
woods are not uncommon, but in poor fa- 
vor, the Europeans being greatly preferred, 
and surely of the white linden (Tilia argen- 
tea) and the white weeping one (Tilia pe- 
tiolaris) some of the most perfect speci- 
mens I ever saw were here. The last named 
is one of the most elegant trees in exist- 
ence. Our yellow wood (Cladrastis tinc- 
toria) occurred in many gardens and fine 
specimens too. Why don’t we plant more 
of this lovely tree? Then there were tulip 
trees, Kentucky coffee trees, horse chest- 
nuts, elms, maples, birches, willows and 
many others. For quick shelter, plane 
trees, soft maples, Norway maples and syc- 
amore maples were largely planted, and too 
as street' trees. Sam Parsons, of New York, 
once told me he’d like to hang a man who 
would plant street trees closer than 50 feet 
apart; in Newport lots and lots of street 
trees are not a fourth of that distance 
asunder! And many of them, bordering the 
avenues, notably sycamore maples have 
been headed down into the dumpiness of 
Norways for view and utility’s sake. 
All manner of lesser trees like dogwoods, 
magnolias, crataegus, pyrus, Japanese ma- 
ples, and the like are freely used in mass- 
ing and fronting the larger groups. Among 
these Pissard’s plum is the most favored of 
crimson-purple leaved plants as it retains 
its deep color all summer. 
Coniferous trees thrive beautifully in ear- 
ly life at Newport, but when 30 or 40 years 
planted many of them get naked stemmed. 
In the earlier days Scotch and Austrian 
pines had been planted extensively, evident- 
ly for shelter, so had Norway spruces, but 
the latter are now very poor. For orna- 
ment Nordman’s fir had been more freely 
used than any other. For shelter belts and 
next to the sea now our native white- spruce 
takes precedence over other evergreens. In 
one princely garden I saw belt thickets of 
superbly blue Mount Atlas cedar (Cedrus 
Atlantica glauca) 16 to 20 feet high! Sac- 
rilege, I thought. Such trees — only one or 
two of them — if set out as isolated spe- 
cimens, would have given a richness and 
dignity to the estate. 
Among lesser conifers the Japanese reti- 
nosporas prevail, occasionally as specimens, 
but more frequently massed or grouped to 
gether, and sometimes sheared into shape or 
line. English yews, too, got the .same treat- 
ment. In one garden where the golden vari- 
egated yew was massed alongside of the typ- 
ical green one, the varigated one proved the 
thriftier and hardier of the two. The Japanese 
umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata) , 10 to 
12 feet high and dense to the ground, was 
quite plentiful, and again it often pained 
me to see it chucked into thickets of other 
evergreens. Considerable use is made of 
tree box. 
All my life I have been a tree man and 
many, many years of practical experience 
have taught me that transplanting large 
trees is often very disappointing, but at 
Newport I found that the gardeners thought 
little more of transplanting trees 4 to 8 
inches caliper and 16 to 20 feet high or 
over than they did of those of 2 inch capi- 
per and 8 to 10 feet high, and with capital 
success. I s^w hundreds of such trees. 
And what much astonished me was that 
these included oaks, beeches and silver firs. 
In the case of lindens, buckeyes, elms and 
maples this would’nt be so surprising. But 
they take the greatest pains with them. 
Wide circles are cut around the trees, every 
root is secured, the branches are cut in (ex- 
cept in the case of conifers) in proportion 
to the mutilation of the roots; when out 
of ground the roots are covered from wind, 
sun and frost and never allowed to get dry; 
holes had already been prepared to receive 
them, and they are planted at once. The 
holes had been made wide and deep and 
the earth still further unfastened. For a 
year or two after, the roots are never al- 
lowed to get dry, and if the trees are con- 
ifers they are sprinkled overhead two or 
three times a day in dry weather the first 
spring. 
The shrubbery in the Newport gardens 
was much the same as we have at home. 
Here and there there were magnificent 
groups of hardy rhododendrous. These in- 
cluded such varieties as Everestianum, Ros- 
eum elegans, Alexander Dancer, Album 
grandiflorum, Charles Dickens, H. W. Sar- 
gent, Kettledrum and Caractacus. 
The great floral glory of the Newport 
gardens in summer are the hydrangeas; the 
finest in the country are said to be there. 
You saw they were pink* bluish, and blue, 
also “single” and “double” and they oc- 
curred as enormous specimens in tubs set 
here and there around the mansions, or 
they were gigantic masses as hardy shrubs 
in the garden. The varieties are the same 
as we grow in our greenhouses, that is Hor- 
tensis or Otaksa, and the “single” one is the 
form known as Japonica. The coloring — 
pink or bluish, is simply as it happens to 
come. I was not told of any attempt to 
blue them artificially. When artificial 
means are employed, finely broken alum 
mixed into the soil is what is used. In two 
or three places I did see intensely blue 
flowers, but in every instance the plants 
were outdoor grown, in somewhat hard 
ground and faintly shaded, iw fact they 
were rather neglected plants, and the deep- 
est blue of all was somewhat under the 
edge of pine .trees. The tub plants are 
brought indoors over winter into frost 
proof, cool sheds, cellars or pits, much the 
same as we in other places treat them. But 
how those Newport gardeners treat their- 
hardy specimens is interesting. We all 
know that planted out of doors the hy- 
drangea will live and grow as far north as 
Boston, but the shoots die down to the- 
ground in winter like a herbaceous plant, 
and the next spring fresh sprouts, strong 
and many come forth, but they seldom 
bear a blossom. The flowering, shoots are 
borne from old wood. Now these big New- 
port hydrangeas have hundreds of heads of 
bloom apiece, and this is how they do it; 
On the approach of winter the plants are 
completely stripped of all foliage and the 
stems or branches tied closely together and 
a boxing erected around them, and inside of 
this box is filled with common earth or 
dirt, and a hood of boards is put on to 
shed snow and rain; oiled canvas would 
also do. In the event of a hard winter a 
mulching of tree leaves could be heaped on 
the ground outside of the boxing. Or, in 
the case of plants that can be handled in 
such a way, the branches are denuded of 
all foliage as before explained and then laid 
down to right and left in a ro-w as we some- 
times do with raspberry and grapevine 
canes in winter and heavily covered over 
with earth. 
Shrubs Prevail Close by the Sea 
The trees occur a little way back from 
the salt water. Matrimony vine, red color, 
wax myrtle, swamp rose, button ball bush, 
sea elder and some others thrive fairly w^ell 
in the teeth of the wind and under occa- 
sional spray, but they are slow growing, 
hence the California privet is used instead, 
massed in belts and thickets. Rosa rugosa 
is not infrequently used in the same way. 
but it is losing favor, the people claim it 
looks a little seedy as the summer ad- 
vances. 
Hedges — Did you ever see so many hed- 
ges. Almost every garden was hedged in 
or fenced in as high as one’s head or 
higher, and hedges intersected and sepa- 
rated the different compartments of the 
gardens as well as formed division lines be- 
ENTTIANCE TO THE MRS. ASTOR ESTATE, NEWPORT, R. I. 
