I am in receipt of your favor of 23rd ulto. giving me the opportunity to advise in regard to the application of an appropriation of $20,000. for the planting and cultivation of trees and shrubs in the National Cemeteries.

The advice called for, in sufficient detail to be of much value, would fill several large volumes. I do not think there is a man living who could say with confidence what varieties of plants would thrive in each of the localities named without having visited them. I can only offer you a few hints of a general character.

First, as to general design. I would recommend that it should be studiously simple; that ambitious efforts of ignorant or half-bred landscape gardeners should be especially guarded against. The main object should be to establish permanent dignity and tranquility. Looking forward several generations, the greater part of all that is artificial at present in the cemeteries must be expected to have either wholly disappeared or to have become inconspicuous and unimportant in the general landscape. The mounds and all marks [387] of individual graves will have been leveled. The ground will be clothed by a considerable indigenous growth as well as by the remains of the trees now to be planted and which will then be venerable. Assuming that one is harmonious with the other, these grounds having been simply protected against outrage and the introduction of things which would be offensive, would then appear more agreeably, appropriately and satisfactorily decorated than they would while in the hands of the most skillful gardener. This then is what I would recommend to be aimed at:—A sacred grove, sacredness and [protection ] being expressed in the enclosing wall and in the perfect tranquility of the trees within.

It will be safer that the whole ground should be covered with trees and shrubs—after a few years densely covered—because we cannot expect good turf to be maintained very long in any of them. In some it must be impossible to establish it even now. Unless protected by dense growth of foliage or turf the ground will soon appear [. . .] and neglected, will wash and gully. By giving it up to a generally dense growth of foliage you adopt the easiest and by far the cheapest way of keeping it.

To get plants much your best as well as your most economical plan would be to collect young plants in each case, from the indigenous woods of the vicinity, chiefly seedlings of from six inches to four feet in height; plant these in a nursery on the ground. This operation would root-prune them, the more fertile and those least adapted to thrive in the soil of the cemetery would die or dwindle and be taken out. The remainder would probably, for the most part, be better adapted to your purpose in that locality than shrubs [that] would be taken from nurseries. In most cases this nursery stock could be obtained by contract with farmers of the vicinity. I have made such contracts repeatedly at from two to five cents a plant, and had them executed satisfactorily by entirely unskilled men. The removal may be made in the fall or spring. The early autumn is best except for a few succulent species, but I think chiefly because in the early autumn the ground is apt to be in better condition, the trees are better planted (manipulated) and the soil is better consolidated about their roots before the next growing season. Practically, in this nursery work, plant at any time after the leaves begin to decay in the early autumn until the new leaves begin to expand in the spring, when the soil is not frosty or slimy with moisture.

Second, a nursery having been established by or with the aid of a special force, the permanent gardeners and keepers of the ground could probably do all the work subsequently necessary. Every fall and spring they should be employed in thinning out the plants, filling up gaps by transplanting from parts too thick, and removing as many as they can of those which appear thrifty and well-rooted to their permanent places. During the summer they should as far as practicable [. . .] the nursery and kept from choking the newly planted trees.

Third, trees of very rapid growth (brittler wooded and short-lived) as [388] the various sorts in different parts of the country called Cottonwood, the Abele or Silver Poplar—all the Poplars—the Alanthus, Pawlonias, Pride of India, etc, should be excluded.

I should advise also against the European Linden and the Am. Silver Maple. Of Evergreens, Balsam Fir and American and Chinese Arbor Vitae are to be avoided.

In trees it is age that costs. There is a large variety of trees which can be obtained by importation at two or three cents each, being then three years old and twice transplanted, which at five or six years of age are sold at a dollar each. With proper care the smaller tree will in ten years be the larger and finer one. The young trees may be transported, transplanted and insured at a tenth the price which would be required for the tree of ordinary size taken from the nursery.

If there is no ground within the cemeteries, or any of them which could be taken for a nursery plat, nursery rows could be made between the tiers of graves. They would be harmless for the time being and would disappear after a few years.