6o 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
REFINEMENT IN PLANTS. 
The man vyho does not love a tree nor shrub is 
the same as he who has no music in his soul. The 
greater refinement, the greater love for nature, not 
because men look back to wildness with regret but 
because they long for that freedom and openness 
which nature represents. But to enjoy nature is 
one thing, to express her is another. When a man 
comes to select and place the kind of shrub which 
he shall plant for his enjoyment, he poses no longer 
as a nature lover but exhibits to the world whether 
he is an artist, not an artist or a barbarian. 
There are good shrubs and there are bad shrubs. 
There are refined shrubs and coarse shrubs. It is 
in the discrimination and use that makes the man 
of taste or tastelessness. No man of means will 
surround himself in his home with uncouth objects 
but he will place before his eye in close proximity 
to that home a coarse ugly bush, good in its proper 
position but there out of place. Shrubs in proxim- 
ity to refinement and close to the eye must be re- 
fined. Finish seems to express the necessary qual- 
ity better than any other word. They must look 
well throughout the entire year. They must be 
compact, not coarse and open, usually not of large 
stature, of continuous good color, with the delicacy 
of the Spiraea without the ostentation and eccen- 
tricity of the Weeping Mulberry. 
Yet coarse shrubs have their place. A dogwood 
at a distance from the eye is beautiful, but its 
coarseness must melt in distance. There in turn a 
finer shrub would seem out of place. Its detail is 
lost and so the plant itself disappears. It seems to 
lack as well the fostering care of the dwelling which 
its delicacy demands. 
But what plants are refined and what not refined? 
There are few shrubs highly refined. The spiraeas 
particularly the Van Houttei and Thunbergii are 
thoroughly so. The Daphne cneorum and Iberis 
sempervirens are delicate little shrubs which are 
always beautiful. Some of the iVzaleas and the 
Evergreen Thorn are such. The Tree Paeony, the 
American Holly, the Andromedas and Box and 
Kerria are of the first quality. x\mong the vines, 
are the Boston Ivy and Clematis in vaiious species. 
Among large plants, the Rhododendron is thor- 
oughly refined as well as the Sweet Bay, both also 
more or less formal. 
A few steps removed are all the good old shrubs 
which every yard and garden has, the lilac, syringas 
and deutzias, the hydrangeas and privets and Jap- 
anese Quince and strange to say the Rose. Very 
coarse are the elders, the dogwoods and hop-tree, 
the dwarf horse chestnut and silver bell. Last 
among shrubs are those which are half trees like the 
hazels and filberts, which have a place only in 
thickets and tangled woods where no one wants to 
go except to get away from conventionality and 
care. 
The barbarous in taste like monstrosities, purple 
and golden leaved things, weeping trees and up- 
right freaks, but these, happily, are cared for less 
and less, although in excessive formality, they have 
their place. 
To choose the proper shrub for its proper place 
means taste and study, the same care and thought 
that is given to a beautiful costume or a well furn- 
ished room. It brings enjoyment as do these but 
it also gives a breath from old mother- earth with 
her life and vigor and restfulness. 
A. Phelps Wyman. 
PLANT PATTERNS AMONG THE GRAVES. 
There remains enough of the planting season of 
1900 to give the gardener time to stop and think 
about the use of bedding- plants in Cemeteries. 
What kind of character ought a cemetery to 
have? We have grown out of the pagan notions of 
making burying-grounds gloomy and depressing 
with cypress and “dismal yew,” as we are grow ng 
out of black plumes and the hideous and hopeless 
paraphernalia of funerals conducted by Christians 
in a spirit of semi-barbarism. We are using white 
to honor the dead, and planting deciduous trees 
and bushes in their resting-places. Now, nothing 
is more genial and cheering than deciduous vege- 
tation. Its very death every fall is but the token 
of a more vigorous resurrection in thq spring: and 
perhaps this idea underlies the instinct of a people 
who have not dread, but hope of something after 
death, and so set those w'ho are not lost but gone 
before, among lilacs and violets and oaks. Thus 
the spiritof the cemetery is hopeful, and even joyous. 
Yet it should be full of a certain solemnity. 
This sentiment has nought to do with the doleful 
dumps of liver complaint, nor the despair of the 
unfortunate, but is akin to the impressiveness of a 
forest, or a mountain range, or even a noble build- 
ing. It is a sentiment only to be felt by healthy 
minds. It is this sentiment that made Dr. Weir 
Mitchell write (in Characteristics”) of a grove of 
great trees with graves among them as the most fit 
and impressive cemetery he had ever seen. 
This is the sentiment wfith which bedding-plants 
are at variance. They are mostly beautiful when 
not spoiled by combination, but always showy, 
usually pretentious, and often merely tawdry. 
When they are made into pattern-beds they are as 
crudely incongruous among the tombs as a display 
offirew'orks. They are artificial, garish, unrestful, 
naive, and many other things that do not compi rt 
with the dignity and beauty of a burying-ground. 
