It enjoyed a longer life than any other American horticultural journal and was modelled on John Claudius Loudon's Gardener's Magazine.

[4] Hovey collected cultivars of pear, apple, plum and grape, also cultivating florist and ornamental plants, with a particular fondness for Camellia and Chrysanthemum.

Hovey wrote a seminal article "Some Remarks upon the Production of new varieties of Strawberries from Seeds" that was published July 1837 in his Magazine of Horticulture, and in which he gave detailed instructions for producing hybrids.

[5] Hovey was a great champion of open spaces and wrote in the Magazine of Horticulture: "We need not enlarge upon the importance of public parks, certainly, if they were more numerous they would prevent the useless expenditure of money for lunatic hospitals.

These now compose a quiet little neighborhood of one, two and three-family homes, about a mile east of Harvard Yard, between Kirkland and Cambridge Streets, near the Cambridge/Somerville city line.