290 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
CONIFEROUS AND OTHER EVERGREENS 
By Bruce Howell, Delivered at Atlanta, Ga., September 
6. 1923, Before Southern Nurserymen’s Convention 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
It gives me great pleasure to have the privilege of see¬ 
ing you again after a strenous but fairly successful year, 
since we met last at that most beautiful city of Lexing¬ 
ton. Kv., and it also gives me pleasure to extend to you a 
most cordial invitation to meet next year at Knoxville, 
Tennessee, the 114% city whose hospitality is proverbial. 
We are not as large a city as Atlanta, and we do not 
boast of our fast horses and beautiful women, (but we’ve 
got ’em). But we do boast that we are an up-to-date city 
that loves nurserymen and we again say come in 1924. 
I feel, honored, gentlemen and ladies, that our honor¬ 
able president, Joe, should think that I could interest you 
for a few minutes talking about this broad and important 
subject of coniferous and other evergreens. 
It is getting so that no planting is complete in our ter¬ 
ritory without a liberal use of evergreens and many ot 
our plantings are exclusively evergreen. Some are ex¬ 
clusively coniferous, and others are exclusively broad 
leaf, and many are a mixture of each, which is better 
but I 1 ike to see them used in connection with our flower¬ 
ing shrubs and foliage plants to tone them down, and add 
a variety and grace which is lacking in most of the ever¬ 
greens that are commonly planted. I say “commonly 
planted” because we nursery men are not familiar with 
many of the beautiful and satisfactory evergreens, both 
coniferous and broad leaf. Some of this unfamiliarity 
is caused by the difficulty in getting stock and some of it 
is caused by our tendency to grow this year what we 
successfully grew last year, and to let well enough alone. 
I would feel that this talk had not been in vain if I 
could induce one brother nurseryman to resolve to do 
what we each and everyone should have done many 
years ago, and that is to establish a trial plot of ground 
and plant in it (not for sale) one each of all of his orna¬ 
mentals, both evergreens and deciduous and allow them 
plenty of room to develop and to give them the best of 
attention and develop specimens of which he will be 
proud. It would make his customers want something 
beside, Irish Juniper, Norway Spruce, Abelias and 
Spiraes. 
How many of you (I should have said us) have our 
own homes planted as they should be? 
How many of us have a plot of ground surrounding 
our homes that could be made into an arboretum or trial 
plot, or whatever you wish to call it, that would add 
much to the appearance of our homes; that would really 
be a show window and induce others to do likewise. It 
would add much to our knowledge and familiarity with 
the plants that we sell every day, incidentally would add 
much to our bank roll by showing our customers what 
can he done with the different plants, and creating in 
them the desire for plants that we have to sell. 
You ask what this has to do with my subject of coni¬ 
ferous and other evergreens—I reply that most of our 
customers know something about flowering shrubbery 
but very little about evergreens except a very few of the 
commonest varieties either coniferous or Broad leaf, and 
it would stand us in hand to teach them to use them. 
I wonder how many of us know that there are fifty or 
more separate and distinct varieties of Retinospora— 
probably 100 varieties of arborvitae and as many Jun¬ 
ipers. I recently picked up a French catalogue which 
advertised 300 varieties of Spruce. Almost all of our 
conifers have a variety of colors and shapes and habits 
of growth, and if you will visit the Arnold Arboretum 
at Boston, you will find hundreds of varieties that are 
really good that we have not even heard of, and which 
should be in every-day use all over our broad land. 
How many of us know over three or four varieties of 
Azaleas and who knows a more beautiful plan? There 
are fully 100 varieties that are hardy, some of them are 
hard to grow, but many of them are not difficult, either 
to grow or to propagate. The Nandina has been growing 
on our place for 20 years, but we never saw a mature 
specimen until we happened on one away from home, and 
now we are a Nandina enthusiast. 
How many of us list more than two or three varieties 
of Euonymous where we might, and should list twenty 
or more good ones? How many of us list over 4 or 5 of 
the Viburnum family, and they are legion, and several of 
them are choice. Broad loaf evergreens are all hardy in 
some parts of our territory. 
How many of us list over a dozen Broad Leaf ever¬ 
greens? There are probably 100 good ones—possibly 
more. The most of you know our place, and know that 
I am hitting myself as hard as I am hitting any one else, 
but I am not hitting at any man, but at a condition, and 
I feel sure that if we would remedy this condition we 
would gain much. 
I regret I do not know much more about my subject 
but the longer I live and the more that I study them, it 
seems the less I really do know. If we would all plant 
out a specimen plant of the varieties we grow we could 
learn their habits, and we soon would get to the point 
where we would know what varieties would succeed 
best in a given territory, be able to advise our customers 
with more intelligence. 
WHAT THE NURSERYMAN HAS DONE FOR 
AMERICA 
By Walter W. Hillenmeyer, Lexington, Kentucky 
Bead Before the Southern Nurserymen’s Association, 
Atlanta } Ga., September 5-6, 1923 
After thinking over this subject “What the Nurseryman has 
done for America,” I have concluded that I at least cannot write 
a satisfactory historical sketch, nor pay tribute in fitting manner 
either to the business or its followers. I find it rather difficult to 
do this subject justice. Happily there exists between us of the 
Southland such a congeniality that I can but have a pleasant 
thought of you and our business and after all thought is the 
greatest thing in the world, for speech is only partly expressive 
and pens run dry in the attempt to transfer our true sentiments. 
And too it is pleasant to write about a business that holds for its 
followers such a peculiar fascination, for when to its antiquity 
are added the mysterious, the useful and the beautiful, its charms 
are boundless. I say antiquity with thought, as our business is 
one of the eldest born of time and therefore rich in historical 
qualities. Ever since Adam and Eve were set adrift before the 
Garden Gate, when rude huts and primitive tents were mankind’s 
highest form of architecture, before Egypt was building her stu- 
