3^4 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
The cemetery is rich in aquatics— in fact, hardy 
Nymphseas are a fad with Mr. Campbell, and the 
character of the grounds is well suited to its full de- 
velopment. 
There are five lakes. The principal one, with 
an area of 108,160 square feet, is fed by several 
springs, the largest being in the cave that gives the 
cemetery itsdistinctive name. Of the five smaller 
ones, having an aggregate area of 28,650 square 
feet, three are fed by springs and the other two by 
the city reservoir. Two of them are planted with 
Nelumbiums' in variety and one with hardy Water 
Lilies. With the favorable conditions offered it 
would seem that Cave Hill might show the finest 
field of Japan Irises in this country. 
* * 
Scrupulous care and nicety is shown in every 
department of the work and exquisite neatness pre- 
vails throughout the grounds. And enthusiasm, 
energy and progressiveness are such strongly marked 
characteristics of all branches of the management 
that Cave Hill is certain to show new beauties and 
excellencies in future that will be well worth watch- 
ing and waiting for. Fanny Copley Seavey. 
Twentieth Century Gardening. 
The suggestion made in your November leader 
is, of course, a rational one, and as you show in 
various other items (pp.‘ 371-373) has for hundreds 
of years been adopted in the older civilized coun- 
tries. There is but little doubt in my mind, how- 
ever, that this very fact militates against the sug- 
gestion, for it cannot be denied that the gardens and 
parks hitherto formed for educational purposes have 
rarely, if ever, been in harmony with the idea of the 
landscape gardener. The scientists who often con- 
trol them think of little but a vain endeavor to crowd 
the greatest number of plants on the space at their 
disposal, and this is always destructive of harmoni- 
ous composition. It is a vain and unnecessary en- 
deavor. No single climate in the world can collect 
more than 3,000 species (with varieties) of real value 
to the landscape. To add more is detrimental to 
beauty and destructive to harmony. It results in 
weediness of aspect and the crowded spottiness 
common to the largest and best of foreign gardens. 
Scientific weed gardens should be out of sight. 
It is possible, with a suitable system as a basis, to 
plant parks and gardens and cemeteries so that they 
may compass all the real beauty of a local garden 
flora, but the selection of material must be rigid 
and the knowledge profound, or the heterogeneous 
disposition may excel it in beauty, even though it 
convey nothing of orderly instruction. In a word, 
the superficial practitioner cannot successfully at- 
tempt it. i 
It is probably a fact also that the greater num- 
ber of Americans despise the science of plants in 
their hearts. It is the same in all naturally wooded 
countries. Gardening always claims its greatest 
votaries in the severer climates, where the effort of 
production is imperative — Scotland, Switzerland and 
North Germany for instance. Neither can the merit 
of the composition be measured by its reflection of 
surrounding nature. Gardening is rather the exclu- 
sion of nature with the fences out of sight and the 
barriers imperceptible, so that none but the know- 
ing can recognize it by the disposition. 
Now, nature always mixes her materials in the 
fertile portions of the globe. In the sterile regions 
they are more rigidly assorted; the scientists and 
the gardeners have conspired together to rigidly as- 
sort in the gardens, and the result has often been 
intense artificiality among the trees, insipidity in the 
shrubbery and chronic disorder in the herb borders. 
The great masters of grouping overcame this 
largely during the last century. Flemming and In- 
gram in the herbaceous garden, Gibson particularly 
in the sub-tropical garden, and Eyles and many an- 
other in the exotic parterre. 
It is a fact to-day, I believe (J shall be very glad 
to hear that I am inistaketi), that no one has ad- 
dressed himself to the harmonious composition of 
the trees and shrubs and herbs of a botanic garden, 
with a view to embellishing the ground! 
It is only now possible. Such gardens hitherto 
have been formed by slow degrees. To-day a most 
respectable collection can be delivered anywhere in 
a month for $ 2 ,ooO or $3,000. 
Moreover, there has been no systems before the 
later methods of De Candolle and Bentham and 
Hooker well adapted to the ground, and with ex- 
traordinary perversity scientists (for reasons already 
given) do much to frustrate them. 
Fine gardens and beautiful depend for their ele- 
gance upon what they exclude. Weeds, rubbish, 
politicians, cow-gardeners, hide-bound scientists, 
pseudo-architects, road contractors and jobbing nur- 
serymen cannot be expected to give expression to 
gardens worthy of the twentieth century. 
Trenton, N. J. James MacP her soft. 
’ A Correction. 
Mrs. Seavey begs to correct a mis-statement in 
her description of the Lexington, Kentucky, Ceme- 
tery, in our last issue. The original plat was laid 
out by Mr. C. S. Bell, the superintendent, and not 
by the French engineer De La Pradlie, who was 
^ only employed to copy and prepare a set of sec- 
( tional maps for binding. 
