147 
PARK AND CE-MKTERY 
tained, where graves are filled oy the level and railings 
or copings around the lots are disallowed. Twenty 
years ago last month I spent some time on a visit to 
my dear old friend, the late Adolph Strauch,of Spring 
Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati, and that opened my 
eyes to the beauty and utility of the natural or park 
style of cemetery. 
But there are two kinds of this modern cemetery. 
In one hardy plants alone are used in its decoration; 
there is an instance of this sort at Brookline, near 
Boston. In the other, both hardy and tender plants 
are used, as is the case in most all of our large ceme- 
teries. I lean to the latter because I believe the peo- 
ple want it. There is a place in the cemetery for 
bedding plants where we can use them appropriately, 
tastefully, and beautifully, and at the same time have 
as great a variety of hardy plants in kind and applica- 
tion as can be liarl in the exclusive cemetery and with- 
out the one conflicting with the other. 
As a business venture a prosperous cemetery is a 
liberal cemetery'. It is poor business to operate a 
cemetery on a skimp or stinted basis. Make y our 
cemetery as beautiful and attractive, but always in 
an appropriate and refined way, as the art of man 
can devise, and the people will come your way and pav 
your price. It isn’t in the vicinity of the burial ' fis 
alone that this beauty and attractiveness must exist ; 
it should be seen from the entrance gates, from the 
outside, and from those parts that yield no direct 
revenue. Not only must you interest and hold the 
people who already have lots in your cemetery, but 
from observation, conversation and reading, your 
townspeople not directly intere.sted in your charge 
should, because of its beauty and attractiveness, have 
your cemetery so happily and indelibly fixed in their 
minds that when tiie question of a burial lot to them 
requires an answer your cemetery is the first and the 
uppermost in their minds. 
I do not at all decry the use of tender bedding 
plants, as geraniums, coleus, cannas and heliotrope 
in cemeteries — in fact, I believe in their brightness 
and cheerfulness. But they should not be spread 
broadcast over the grounds. Restrict them to the 
neighborhood of the entrance gates, the office, or 
other buildings, or to a piece of ground set apaii for 
a flower garden proper. Then use them with brains 
and be not over gay or liberal. To make ami fill 
up a lot of big beds with plain geraniums, coleu.s 
or cannas is the easiest, cheapest, most glaring and 
erroneous kind of gardening. Have these heavy 
masses of color in the background relieved b}- dis- 
tance or neighboring shrubbery, and in the fore- 
ground let your flower beds consist of a variety of 
suitable plants so artistically arranged that every per- 
son who passes by must stop to look at them. These 
beds may show panels, loops, chains or other blocks 
relieved by a tracery or scrollwork, each panel to 
consist of diffierent plants from the other. Material 
suitable for this work are rubbers, small palms, cro- 
tons, screw pines, century plants, cactuses, and the 
like for the panels ; alternanthera for the scrolls ; tali- 
num, variegated ice plant or sweet alyssum, seclums 
of sorts, othonna and peristrophe for the carpeting, 
and echeverias and other cotyledons for the beltings. 
Many more plants than these are also appropriate. 
But “carpet bedding” consisting of the portrayal of 
birds and animals, boats and vases and other unnat- 
ural objects is repugnant to any refined soul; so are 
intricate nonsensical patterns. 
In addition to formal flower gardening, however, 
there are many proper ways of using tender plants 
in the cemetery. For instance, I see nothing amiss 
in having the white Vinca rosea or the purple Ver- 
bena venosa, or the lilac trailing lantana as borders 
for newly planted shrubberies, or a free use of colo- 
nies of gladiolus, summer hyacinths, tigridias, tube- 
roses or scarlet cannas in the open spaces among 
young shrubs in the same way as we grow hardy lilies 
earlier in the year. 
Hardy perennials should add greatly to the decora- 
tion of our cemetery grounds. In such places, how- 
ever, I am not in sympathy with the stereotyped 
herbaceous borders. At best a perennial has only a 
limited season of blooming, and when that period is 
over there is little comeliness in the plant itself, and 
in all of our work, in park, garden or cemetery, we 
must avoid raggedness, uncouthness, unkemptness, 
and nakedness in our floral planting. We must study 
permanent places for the different species of hardy 
plants ; for instance, let us have a mass of pseonias 
by themselves, a spread of columbines, a carpet of 
cushion pinks, a group of white day lilies, a bed of 
Koempfer’s or German irises, a sod of moss pinks, 
a blaze of phlox and so on, but arranged so that when 
their bloom is past they may be tapped or cut over 
without leaving a blank or disfigurement. The foliage 
of the pasonia, the iris, day lily and many others re- 
mains good after the flowers are past, but that of the 
oriental poppy and the bleeding heart soon dies to 
the ground and must be replaced with annuals, as 
zinneas, nasturtiums, or white tobacco or other tem- 
porary filling, as tritomas or cannas. 
Avoid the conglomerative style of everything to- 
gether in one bed, and all sizes ; it has no effect. If 
you wish for any good from herbaceous plants have 
them in masses each kind by itself. Individual plants 
scattered here and there, for instance a lily in this 
place, a larkspur in that and a feverfew yonder, have 
no character whatever in the landscape; they show 
for nothing. But have a big mass of any one of them 
and all in bloom together, the effect is catching and 
striking from whatever point you see it. 
One of the most beautiful, interesting and pleasing 
features in the use of hardy plants is their naturaliza- 
tion in grass and woodland, and one giving little 
trouble and costing little. Crocuses, snowdrops, Si- 
berian blue squills, blue and white graoe hyacinths, 
star triteleias, and chionodoxa dribbled thickly but 
unevenly into the grass bordering shrubbery as an 
outcropping for the same, are charmingly beautiful 
in spring; but never spread them over the middle of 
your lawns. In good ground, particularly if a little 
shaded, they may last for years, the crocuses and 
snowdrops perhaps requiring the most frequent re- 
newal. Decorating the wild woodlands in this way 
is simply accentuating Nature. We can send into the 
outside woods and gather great quantities of dog- 
tooth violets, squirrel corn and spring beauty, and 
with a fork or pick dig them into the cemetery woods, 
and get Solomon’s seal, lungwort, trilliums, blood- 
root, starwort, windflower, hepaticas, lady’s slipper 
orchids, pentstemjon, columbines. May apples, bell- 
wort, and many others, and plant colonies of them; 
and meadow beauty, lilies, meadow rue, fringed or- 
