REVIVING OUR OLDEST BOTANIC GARDEN 
T UCKED away comfortably in New England and 
under the shadows of one of our greatest institutions of 
learning is the oldest existing botanical garden of 
America. Long ago it served great purposes and 
is one of the oldest scientific establishments of 
Harvard University. Here Asa Gray worked, for instance. 
To-day this seven-acre garden (very appropriately located 
on Linnaean Street, Cambridge, Mass.) and still arranged 
about as it was a hundred years ago is reawakening into an 
activity that will touch a sympathetic chord among gardeners. 
This most northern of botanic gardens is peculiarly favorably 
situated for testing hardiness and testing problems of acclimat¬ 
ization. It is proposed to make the Harvard Botanic supple¬ 
ment the work of the Arnold Arboretum, bv rendering in its 
chosen field a service similar to that of the Arboretum with its 
great collection of hardy woody plants. 
No botanical garden or other institution has yet given serious 
attention to the multitude of hardy herbaceous plants (which 
form such an important element in every garden, great or in¬ 
significant), and the Harvard Botanic Garden now proposes to 
undertake work in this direction and to establish type collections 
of herbaceous garden plants and to serve as a distributing center 
for new and lesser known forms when they have special garden 
merit. 
The perennials now growing in this garden are arranged by 
families, for purpose of study, in the order of Engler and Prantl 
in curving beds around a central pool; the annuals of the families 
being planted in the two inner beds, thus keeping members of 
one family together. In a wooded section near-by is an area for 
the wild flowers of North America arranged by geography rather 
than by family. Yet another corner will be devoted to parents 
of hybrids of our common garden Roses. The Lily family, 
Ferns, and hardy Orchids all find appropriate settings. 
I here is a range of greenhouses to supplement the outdoor 
work of the garden and an unheated portion has indoor rock 
gardens which afford many points of interest at all seasons of 
the year, while outdoors is another rock garden where the abili¬ 
ties of these Alpine plants to withstand the northern winter is 
being tested. 
In addition to the work of testing new herbaceous plants for 
hardiness and suitability for American gardens there is oppor¬ 
tunity for breeding and selective work in making new forms and 
hybrids of plants already in cultivation. And no little service 
will be rendered all horticultural interests in checking up and 
straightening out confusion of names in species and garden 
varieties already generally grown. There is indeed much to be 
done here, and to further this end the Director invites assistance 
—seeds or small plants of useful or flowering herbs will gladly 
be accepted by the garden, and exchanges in kind will be made. 
The garden will also offer a limited opportunity for study and 
work in training for practical horticulture under conditions of 
the northern United States for which there is little present chance 
anywhere in the country. The new activity of the new botanic 
garden will be in association with the other departments of 
study in Harvard University and in the associated schools of 
the region. 
All this is splendid news and will bring the work of the garden 
into definite contact with garden lovers all over the country. 
The recently appointed director, Mr. Stephen F. Hamblin, is 
favorably known to the readers of The Garden Magazine 
through his many contributions to our pages, but his initial steps 
are taken under the somewhat restricting handicap of the small 
endowment under which the garden works. The increased cost 
of labor and materials, with an endowment the same as it was 
ten years ago, has already necessitated a reduction of the work¬ 
ing force to one half; which means that less than half as much 
really progressive work is being done and it is hoped that 
voluntary gifts to increase the endowment (which should be at 
least doubled) may be made through various sources and among 
those who will derive direct benefit from the results of the widen¬ 
ing work now being put into effect. Any reader interested in 
the suggestions made for the benefit of the collections, financial 
or otherwise, or about the possibilities of special training is 
invited to correspond with the Director. 
A MONUMENT TO LEMOINE 
T HE name Victor Lemoine suffices to recall to any gardener’s 
mind the multitude of achievements in hybridization and 
plant improvements that stand to the record of this greatest of 
all plant breeders, measured by actual achievement in lasting 
additions to our gardens. It would take several pages of this 
magazine to merely enumerate the vast throng of worthwhile 
plants of garden and greenhouse which stand to the credit of 
that indefatigable worker at Nancy, France. 
He it was who gave us the modern Lilac, the first Double 
Begonias and the universally grown Gloire de Lorraine, which 
things alone are sufficient to achieve his place for all times in 
modern history, to say nothing of the many improvements of 
the Lilac after his first start and of the more recent hybrids in 
Philadelphus, Deutzias, Weigelas, Hydrangeas; and what 
gaps there would be if Lemoine’s Peonies and Gladiolus and Iris 
had not been given us! 
He gave us the first Double Geraniums more than half a 
century ago and the catalogues that came from that little corner 
of France are milestones of progress in plant improvement, and 
the work is still being carried on by his son Emil. 
Victor Lemoine died Dec. 1 ith, 1911, in his 89th year, revered 
by all who ever knew him and with the homage of thousands 
who knew him only by his works. Victor Lemoine was a true 
horticulturist whose glory belongs not alone to France but to 
the world, a creator as deserving of honor as any great painter, 
sculptor, or poet. 
It is fitting, therefore, that the Central Horticultural Society 
of his home town should at this time be organizing for the cele¬ 
bration of his centenary (he was born Oct. 21st, 1823), and is 
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