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PARK AND CEMETERY. 
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS 
CONDUCTED BY 
MRS. FRANCES COPLEY SEAVEY. 
RAILROAD GARDENING. 
Everyone who knows anything of municipal art 
acknowledges the importance of an attractive front 
door for cities and for towns. The natural place for 
the municipal front door, as Mr. Robinson clearlv sets 
forth in his latest book, “Modern Civic Art,” is at 
the water approach, provided there is one, otherwise 
its natural situation is at the railway station. 
While improvement organizations may not have the 
to the public. Railway stations and grounds, particu- 
larly in small places, are usually dirty and depressing 
and at the best are mostly hard, prosaic and to the 
last degree utilitarian in aspect. Jt really is quite a 
simple matter to make them otherwise, especially in 
this day of widespread interest in horticulture among 
railway officials. This movement extends throughout 
the railway world, but is just now perhaps most pro- 
nounced in America. It is difficult in this day to find 
a railway company entirely indifferent to horticulture, 
and the majority of prominent corporations are 
actively forwarding one or more phases of rail- 
road gardening on their own properties. The 
planting done is divided into three classes, which, 
however, frequently meet and merge, serving one, two 
or three purposes at one and the same time. These 
AN EFFECTIVE ILLUSTRATION OF OUT-DOOR ART WITH MOST OF THE ART LEFT OUT. NO ART IN TREATMENT OF 
THE CONTOUR OF THE GROUND SURFACE: PLANTING GOOD— AS FAR AS IT GOES— PRUNING AS BAD AS POSSIBLE. 
happiness to become modern city builders, they may 
do good work in that direction by putting into practice 
the best modern ideas in every phase of municipal im- 
provement work they may undertake. 
Everv town, speaking broadly, has a railway sta- 
tion, and to make it take its place as a well-designed, 
well-placed and thoroughly seemly front entrance is a 
work worthy the best mental and physical efforts of 
any citizen or group of citizens. 
This entrance must be designed to adequately meet 
the practical requirements of the situation, and it must 
be made attractive to the eye. Its duty is to create 
a favorable impression by its convenience and by its 
appearance. That is a point which needs no argu- 
ment to make it forceful. 
Nearly all towns present a shabby front entrance 
broad divisions are economic, protective and orna- 
mental planting, in all of which scientific forestry 
holds an important place. 
We are, naturally, most deeply interested in the 
landscape effects of this work because the province of 
improvement organizations is to beautify the face of 
the earth. 
While all of the work undertaken by railway com- 
panies is thoroughly well done physically, it is most 
unfortunately true that their gardening by no means 
invariably meets the requirements of good art. The 
more's the pity, since artistically excellent horticulture 
need be no more expensive than planting devoid of 
artistic meaning and merit — less expensive, indeed, in 
the long run, a fact that should appeal to railway 
maintenance-of-way men. I believe I am right in 
