68 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
work by buying 40 acres of land at Waterloo and from 
that beginning has grown the magnificent concern which 
now uses nearly 700 acres of land, at times employs 200 
men in its operations and has the largest winter cellars 
and packing houses of any nursery in the country. Mr. 
Ileenfritz was a man of massive mold, and he planned 
o 
and worked in a large way. In 1871 the Methodist church 
in this city—the church of his love and devotion—was 
built, and into this he put his whole soul and energy, con¬ 
tributing nearly $15,000, and thus that noble edifice may 
almost be regarded as his monument, for without his gifts 
its present proportions would not have been possible. His 
business experience was not all sunshine. In the 70’s 
some severe winters damaged his stock badly, and later a 
great hail storm battered down the labor of years. But 
through all adversities he was serene and confident, and 
the house he founded is now one of the most flourishing 
institutions of its kind in the United States. In 1880 the 
firm of I. E. Ilgenfritz & Sons was formed. The deceased 
left a widow, six sons and five daughters.” 
HONEST MEN HONORED. 
A few years ago, writes E. M. C., Sing Sing, N. Y., in 
Rural Nezv Yorker, I sent to a leading nursery for a Lom¬ 
bard plum tree; this variety was not so common or cheap 
as now. From it I grafted some 20 large trees ; last season 
they bore for the first, and the fruit was no more like a 
Lombard than a Baldwin. They are poor enough, and 
now I am grafting them over again ; it’s terribly provoking 
as well as a loss. Another fact has perplexed me much: 
I have several times sent to leading nurseries for certain 
kinds of trees, and if they happened to be out of that 
particular kind, some other was substituted. If that is 
an honest way of dealing, I fail to see it. If I pay for a 
horse, I don’t want a goat. This spring, I sent to R. M. 
Kellogg, of Michigan, for plants ; he was all out of the 
variety ordered, and he returned the money ; there’s a 
square-dealing man. Last fall, I sent to the Rogers 
Nursery Co., of New Jersey, for a lot of trees ; part of 
them were sent at once, the rest this spring. A finer lot 
I never received ; but those received in the fall were all 
winter-killed, owing to the extreme cold. I wrote, request¬ 
ing them to be sure to let me know when they shipped 
this spring, as the first lot had been killed, and I wished 
to make sure of the rest. They sent back word that they 
would refill the order. I wrote them, no ; if they would 
send me a few (for I had none of that variety), I would be 
entirely satisfied ; but they refilled the order, and put in 
enough extra trees to pay all expenses. I write this in 
order that others buying quite largely, may know that 
here is a company whose business is squared by the 
Golden Rule. 
BEST OF ITS CLASS. 
Storrs & Harrison Co., Painesville, 0.—“ The National 
Nurseryman is the best of all papers of its class. It is an excellent 
advertising medium.” 
BEAUTY OF THE LANDSCAPE. 
I have just read a few extracts from a report upon a 
park system in which the remarkable admission is made 
that the selection of the planting material is after the 
ponding of water, “ practically the only work which can 
be done for the enhancement of the beauty of the land¬ 
scape !” Everything comes to him who waits, but I 
declare I can scarcely credit what I have read, so very 
different is the dicta to much of the observed practice. 
Why, for upwards of twenty years, I have half scolded in 
every letter I have written on landscape matters, and 
have hinted as broadly as 1 thought any journal would 
print, that I believed there was almost an entire absence 
of any intelligent selection of material whatever, that the 
material received little or no consideration, except that of 
dollars and cents. Ah ! here we are. Pitch, Pine, “ Cedar,” 
(whatever that may mean) Juniper and Hemlock, these 
are samples of proposed selection, and even they must 
wait upon the building, or at least the “planning” of the 
permanent roads and paths. 
Really to me it all reads very funny. You see I am 
not a road architect to any eminent extent beyond what 
a professional gardener should be. I have “built ” many 
miles at one time or another, however, some of it I am 
sure in as difficult country for roading as there is any¬ 
where, but the planting could never afford to wait—that 
would have meant the curtailment of a considerable 
revenue from crops. Things were managed by a sort of 
professional instinct in those days I think, for simple and 
direct means were taken to study the topography by 
living amidst it, and then the roads along the sides and 
round about the mountains were leveled just as simply, 
and following close behind came enough labor to “ trace ” 
them, as we called it, not upon paper but upon the 
ground. The only roads we thought it necessary to widen 
and construct permanently and at once, were those lead¬ 
ing to the building sites. The so-called traces were 
really bridle paths. So you see the very first essentials 
were means of communication. No, there was no great 
amount of drawing involved ; we soon found that the best 
efforts of engineers and draughtsmen were utterly inade¬ 
quate to convey a sufficient idea of either the topography 
or the scenery, no matter how much they exhausted 
themselves. We could level and construct our roads, do 
the blasting, the bridge building, build the revetments 
and such like, in something less time than it took them to 
prepare their gauges, make the surveys, do their studying, 
and get out drawings. They fumed around a little, and 
no doubt felt a little hurt at first, but they soon ended up 
by wanting to know “ what can we do with such men as 
those?” Oh, yes ! the scenery. Well, you seethe fact 
of the matter was that a road could not be taken any¬ 
where without encountering the scenery, so we soon 
ceased to worry ourselves about it. Sometimes where a 
road was shut in between a pair of high hills, and we 
wanted to make things interesting, quite a good deal of 
“ selected material ” was planted, but we never once 
