78 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
growth, if any, along their roads. Con¬ 
ditions in Florida are different. Here we 
have the most advanced road building tak¬ 
ing place through primeval forests and we 
have opportunities that others would pay 
generously for having. We have a won¬ 
derful wealth of tree and shrub growth 
differing in different sections of the State. 
Why not make use of it? 
As we all know, soil conditions vary in 
almost every locality, five miles of road 
often passing through as many different 
kinds of growth. In our gardens and 
groves and farming we consider this fact, 
but in the articles on highway planting we 
find no consideration of it, ambitious 
plans being set forth calling for regular, 
uniform planting of trees and shrubs for 
miles of highway and the result is visual¬ 
ized as a uniformly luxuriant growth of 
the same kind of planting. 
With very little expense the natural 
growth which is to be found along most 
of our roads could be cultivated a little, 
encouraged, added to by plants and trees 
common to each particular locality, flow¬ 
ering shrubs gradually added as preda¬ 
tory cattle and forest fires allow, and at a 
moderate expense the grass could be kept 
in flourishing condition along the paving 
by two or three mowings a year. Such a 
plan w r ould give us quick results, would 
give us a highway border that would be 
of the greatest interest to our visitors 
from other states and could be carried out 
with the minimum expense. It would 
preserve specimens of trees that will soon 
be almost extinct unless the policy of for¬ 
est destruction followed in our State can 
be changed. 
We do not have to wait for large funds 
and better laws before we can make a be¬ 
ginning in highway improvement. The 
funds and the laws will come, but in the 
meantime let us who live along our high¬ 
ways make our own places attractive; let 
us plant vines and flowers along our 
fences, saw off our fence posts to an even 
line, tear down disfiguring signs and save 
what nature has given us and before we 
know it our highways will be vistas of 
loveliness. While working to attain an 
ideal we can idealize the attainable. 
The Florida Federation is also working 
for at least one county park in every coun¬ 
ty. Such a park should preferably be a 
spot having something distinctive in the 
way of natural growth; a beautiful tract 
of untouched high pine land, a jungle-like 
portion of hammock, a tract of cypress 
growth. Unless something of this sort is 
done, the time is near at hand when our 
State will be as barren of forests or any¬ 
thing suggesting forest growth, as the 
prairie states of the West. 
With a conservation of natural growth 
along our highways and county parks in 
every county, we could in time have a con¬ 
tinuous botanical garden. 
In considering the matter of a State 
Flower Show I feel that it should be the 
culmination of stages of preparation rath¬ 
er than a starting point for flower culture 
in the State. 
A State show to be the success it should 
if it is to be a credit to Florida, must have 
the interest and support of the people as a 
whole rather than of just a few. In or¬ 
der to get this interest every county must 
become a possible exhibitor, for if this is 
