14 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
These three species are the only trees that 
we found on the mountain that seemed 
disposed to endure open exposure, and I 
believe that all three of them can be made 
perfectly at home in all the land between 
St. Paul and the Mountains, and that they 
will be infinitely superior in every respect 
to any deciduous tree that can be planted, 
indeed that they will be par excellence the 
windbreak trees of the prairies and revers- 
ing the usual order of planting, these ever- 
greens may be planted to protect the de- 
ciduous trees on the prairies rather than 
the deciduous trees to protect the ever- 
greens. 
For perhaps ten years past the Black 
Hills spruce lias had a growing popularity 
on the western plains, and is now by many 
considered the hardiest and best adapted to 
the dry air and soil of the prairies of all 
PARK PLANT 
The prairie village usually grows up 
around a railway station, the station itself, 
a watertank and a row of grain elevators 
forming the civic center, so to speak. 
Everything else must be created. And the 
people who come are poor, as the frontiers- 
man always is. Carnegies and Rockefellers 
do not start the prairie towns. Houses, 
stores and shops must be built, streets 
must be graded, sidewalks must be laid, 
crossings must be put in, a public water 
supply must be obtained, fire protection 
must be secured, the streets must be 
lighted, schools must be maintained — for 
the people who go to the frontier are 
usually young, and many children are born 
to them. All these things take money, and 
tax levies become burdensome, often as 
high as five and six per cent. Then there 
comes a demand for a high school and a 
public library. Perhaps there will be a call 
for a municipal lighting plant, with orna- 
mental lights on Main street. 
But with the coming of ornamental lights 
the discovery is apt to be made that the 
growing town is not so esthetically beau- 
tiful as it might be. The grounds near the 
railway station are found to be decorated 
with discarded farm machinery, illy kept 
coal sheds, disreputable lumber yards, the 
whole overgrown with Russian thistles, 
oriental mustards, French penny-cress, as 
well as with a choice collection of Amer- 
ican weeds. Perhaps the streets have been 
“worked,” but if that is the case, the road- 
way is very apt to have been made much 
too wide, and the parking or boulevard 
much too narrow, and very likely the whole 
has become overgrown with coarse weeds 
or tall prairie grasses. Tf trees have been 
set along the residence streets they are 
apt to be box elders, that weed among 
trees, set much too thickly and far too 
close to where the sidewalk should be. If 
evergreens that have been planted. I was 
very much interested in learning through 
the forest ranger that this spruce, together 
with two or three other species, was found 
in this mountain. In my own explorations 
I frequently came upon it but always in 
the deep canons and valleys or more gen- 
erally on the higher and cooler altitudes 
of the upper part of the mountain, clearly 
proving that it was far less adapted to 
open exposure and dry soil than the three 
species which I have before mentioned, 
and that if it tolerates the climate of the 
Dakotas, the Douglas fir may be counted 
on as altogether superior and able to 
endure hardship far better than the Black 
Hills spruce. It may not be generally 
known that the Douglas fir is also one of 
the more rapid growing evergreens, which 
ING FOR PRA 
Address by Lycurgus R. Moyer, be- 
fore Minnesota Horticultural Society. 
the town-site proprietor when he laid out 
the town left a block marked “public 
square,” it may have been planted orchard 
fashion with a collection of box elders and 
cottonwoods. If these trees have grown 
up, the square itself is a problem that the 
most expert landscape artist scarcely would 
dare to tackle. Assuming that the public 
square is on high, dry ground, the cotton- 
woods are apt to have begun to fail, while 
the box elders have attained their full 
growth and are becoming more and more 
decrepit from old age with each passing 
year. At the city dumping grounds, not 
far away, there is found a pile of old rusty 
tin cans, broken crockery, dilapidated old 
stoves and other cast off impedimenta of 
civilization that fire would not destroy. 
If there be a lake or a stream near by 
with its fringe of trees or shrubs, the 
chances are that it has been used for pas- 
ture land or as sites for neglected stables, 
until most of its original beauty has been 
lost or destroyed. 
The breaking plow and the fenced pas- 
ture have destroyed the original prairie 
flora, and along the country roads one only 
sees a fringe of ugly weeds. Strange, is it 
not, what desolation civilization leaves be- 
hind it! 
Fortunate is the prairie town which does 
not have among its early settlers a large 
number of people whose only ambition is 
money-getting, people whose God is money. 
And doubly fortunate is the town that does 
not have a large number of croakers who 
object to all esthetic improvements. 
But the time comes eventually when the 
people begin to look about them and dimly 
begin to realize how inexpressibly ugly 
their town really is. But the time of 
awakening is a long process, and those 
who begin to see are often looked upon 
as visionaries and fools. 
on our grounds usually keeps up with the 
Norway and white spruces. It has also 
the richest foliage of almost any conifer 
that has been planted. When I visited Mr. 
Hill’s place at Dundee, 111., well known as 
one of the leading evergreen specialists of 
the country, I found him inclined to give 
the Douglas fir about the highest place 
among the species which he had tried out 
in northern Illinois. We have therefore 
in this tree, as I think, not only an ever- 
green of great hardiness, valuable for plant- 
ing almost anywhere for shelter, but also 
an ornamental tree of first quality that in 
our parks, lawns, and cemeteries will as 
time goes on and it is better known and 
appreciated, have the place of honor as per- 
haps the best all around evergreen that 
can be planted. 
I R I E TOWNS 
Now that home rule charters are com- 
mon, it is well to see that the town has a 
park board, say of five members, one to be 
appointed by the mayor each year to hold 
office for five years. Get a small appro- 
priation from the council and begin work. 
A good place to commence is on the rail- 
way station grounds. Get that cleaned up 
and seeded down to grass. Good grass 
is the foundation of all landscape work. 
There is nothing better than bluegrass and 
clover. The clover will die out in the 
course of a year or two, but it takes that 
long for bluegrass to get started. Try to 
get the railway company interested ; try 
the superintendent, the road master, the 
station agent. Get their consent if you 
cannot get their co-operation and go ahead. 
There are always waste places about the 
station grounds that may be planted. Make 
your plantations so that they will look well 
from the car windows or from the station 
platform. Plant large beds of peonies, 
beds of iris and beds of phlox in the fore- 
ground, with groups of caraganas, groups 
of lilacs, groups of bush honeysuckles 
farther back. Besides the common lilacs 
be sure to have the Japanese tree lilac, the 
Villosa, the Rothmagensis, the Charles X., 
the Senator Vollard, and the Lady Josicke.a 
lilacs. A clump of barberries will not be 
amiss, with one or two purple ones. Do 
not mix your planting too much. In the 
main make your clumps of plants and 
shrubs belonging to the same genus. 
If the business street does not lead right 
down to the station, the parking of the 
station approaches will next demand atten- 
tion. The roadways need not be more 
than thirty feet wide — narrower are some- 
times better — and the rest of the street 
should be seeded down to grass and 
planted with trees and flowering shrubs. 
Besides the shrubs already spoken of, the 
