PAR.K AND CEMETERY 
148 
chis, violets, rose mallow, and loosestrife in the damp 
or meadow lands ; and the vivid firepink, golden cory- 
dalis, and Virginia saxifrage in the exposed parts. 
And we have still another field for hardy flowers 
in the cemetery, namely, the wild garden, and this 
was suggested to me last Monday by one of your 
members now present. He has a broad, deep, sloping 
bank or side hill, around the base of which there is a 
driveway, and the railway runs close by in front of it, 
and he wants to plant this as brightly and conspicu- 
ously as possible, to give color the whole summer 
long as an attraction and advertisement to his ceme- 
tery. Now, to do this properly will require trees, 
shrubs, vines and hardy perennials. In the way of 
small trees I would suggest Primus Davidiana, red- 
bud, shadbush, white dogwood, snowdrop tree, cock- 
spur thorn, English pink and white hawthorn, white 
fringe tree, crah apples, IVkin and Japan lilacs, yel- 
low wood, Koelreuteria, swamp magnesia, Mands- 
churian aralia, Osbeck’s sumach, Cliinese tamarix 
and single flowered althaeas. In the way of shrubs, 
forsythias, Japan quince, crenata deutzias, mock or- 
anges, villosa lilacs, sweet briar, rugosa and single 
prairie roses, weigelias, Thunberg s, arguta. Van 
Houtte’s, sorbifoha and salicifolia spiraeas, vibur- 
nums in variety but no “double” ones, and the “sin- 
gle” flowered form of Hydrangea paniculata. Among 
vines to scramble among and over the bushes and 
stumps, would recommend the grandiflora and com- 
mon trumpet creeper, Mikania scandens, and our 
common and flammula and paniculata clematises, and 
Japanese honeysuckle and Chinese matrimony vine. 
In the way of perennials choose the brightest, such 
things as can be seen best from a distance. On the 
open, rocky places spread moss pink, stone crop, 
rock cress; in the clunks let firepink and columbines 
prevail, have colonies of tiger and superbum lilies, 
lots of foxgloves, bleeding heart, German and spring 
iris. Lamarck’s evening primrose, goat's-beard spi- 
raea, meadow rue, single pyrethrum, coreopsis, plume 
poppy (Becconia), orange-colored asclepias, and 
Japanese anemones. And remember the great vari- 
et}^ of wild asters, coneflowers and perennial sunflow- 
ers. And if need be, in fall have a big mass of tri- 
toma in bloom, and a few scarlet cannas, if you hide 
the foliage, will give life to the mass. And don't for- 
get a big group of yuccas. Also add the European 
and American spindle trees and mountain ash for 
their showy fruit. 
Trees must ever form the chief decoration of your 
cemetery and serve to construct your landscape pic- 
tures. But be careful to select only those that thrive 
well in your neighbdrhood and are appropriate to 
your purpose. In timbered regions where land is good 
and the rainfall fair, most any kind of hardy tree will 
thrive; in exposed treeless plains however we may 
have to depend upon cottonwood and other poplars, 
box elder and willows. Plant trees for shelter, shade, 
and lawn efifect. Every tree should be of comely form, 
proportionate in its make-up, and of natural habit, in 
fact, anything unnatural in shape or color should be 
excluded from the cemetery. The Babylonian wil- 
low, pendulous white birch and weeping beech are 
pretty trees in themselves and there is a place for 
them in a limited way in the cemetery, but no more so 
than in the park or garden. The Kilmarnock willow 
and Camperdown elm have neither grace nor beauty 
and the city of the dead is not a home for freaks. Col- 
umnar trees as Lomhardy poplar or Swedish juniper 
as marking posts for graves should be eliminated, and 
I would urge against the use of raw or unnatural foli- 
age as the yellow spotted ash or golden catalpa. We 
can find a place foi them in a park hut they are not 
refined or pure or dignified enough for the cemetery. 
The regulation distance between newly planted trees 
averages 50 feet, and the question of thick planting has 
been thrashed bare in horticultural journals, and bitter 
execrations have been hurled at the heads of those 
who would plant thicker than this, and the never-thin- 
ned, neglected plantations in New York and Brooklyn 
parks have been held forth as living examples of the 
evils of thick planting and the sins of those who 
planted them. Indeed Sam Parsons himself told me 
he’d hang a man who’d plant trees closer than 50 feet. 
And knowing all this I beseech you to plant thickly 
and get immediate effect, and afterwards thin early 
and l)efore any tree can encroach upon to injure its 
neighbor. Plant your trees as if you yourselves were 
in perpetual care of them. If your successor be igno- 
rant or fool enough to neglect or ignore the work 
founded by you, that is no affair of yours. 
Planting trees under such adverse conditions as we 
have here along the Monongahela river may interest 
some of you. The land is very hilly and precipitous, the 
foundation shale 01 “nigger head” rock, and the soil 
the toughest kind of red or yellowish clay, and the 
atmosphere vitiated l)eyond expression from the dense 
smoke and fumes of railways and miles of foundries. 
Iflast furnaces, glass works, copper works and coke 
ovens, and all of the natural trees are already dead or 
fast dying. 
Our tree holes are 5 to 6 ft. wide and ip2 to 2 ft. 
deep. In digging them we remove to one side the 
upper crust or fairly good dirt, bore a hole in the mid- 
dle and shiver it with dynamite, pick or dig this out 
to required depth, then if necessary bore again in 
the liottom of the same hole and shiver it with dyna- 
mite. This to allow water in winter to escape and the 
roots to penetrate. Then return tlie best part of the 
clay that has been removed and fill up with fresh soil 
from somewhere else. 
Where the vitiated atmosphere is the worst, the 
ailanthus is the only tree we get to grow, next comes 
the yellow locust, and a little further hack bird cherry, 
American white ash, mulberry, soft and Norway ma- 
ples, Oriental plane, pin oak and heavy locust are 
holding their own. The sugar maple, scarlet maple, 
beech and iron wood although native here are total 
failures. 
In planting ailanthus and locust we take 2-year-old 
plants and cut them back to within 3 or 4 inches of 
the ground then in soft weather any time between 
November and April, dibble them into the earth up to 
the neck with a crowbar, and tamp firmly, setting them 
3 to 5 feet apart. 
In all our work the lesser trees must take a promi- 
nent part. Massed with shrubs they form a fitting- 
fringe to groves of greater trees, a good belting along 
boundary and shelter lines, and they are indispensable 
in landscope groups and their variety is so great as to 
af¥ord us effective ornament in the way of blossoms, 
bright fruit or tinted leaves from , April till Novem- 
ber. Among the best of them for their flowers are 
shadbush, Chinese and Japanese magnolias and our 
swamp magnolia, dogwood, redbird, double cherry. 
