STATION GARDENING 
By W. FRANK McCLURE 
T HE beautifying of railroad and especially 
depot grounds by means of flower gar¬ 
dening is receiving no little attention from 
the leading railways in America today. Large 
sums are being expended annually by the rail¬ 
roads of the Eastern States, not only in the 
cultivation and distribution of flowers and 
plants, but in the laying out of walks and 
the care of trees. 
The station at Mentor, in Northern Ohio, 
affords an example of what has been accom¬ 
plished in the way of evolution from dingy 
industrial surroundings to those of beauty 
and fragrance and shade. Although railroad 
gardening is usually bad from the view-point 
of landscape art—and the work at Mentor is 
not a complete exception—the effort which 
has been made here illustrates how easily the 
traveler who must pause at a small town may 
be supplied with a better view from his car 
window than irretrievable ugliness. 
More than a decade ago Mr. John Newell, 
the president of the line of railroad on which 
Mentor is situated, inaugurated in a small 
way the work of beautifying railroad grounds. 
He was a man who loved natural scenery 
and flowers, and he succeeded in interesting 
many others in admiring and studying the 
beauties of nature about them, and, best of 
all, in cultivating them where they do not 
exist. Before Mr. Newell’s death he had 
the satisfaction of seeing many pretty garden 
spots beside the tracks as his special car car¬ 
ried him over the road. Of these spots 
Mentor was then and is yet the most attrac¬ 
tive of all. It was chosen as the site for 
special efforts on account of the location 
here of one of the railroad’s two green- 
THE PLANTING AT MENTOR STATION, OHIO 
243 
