SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 505 



right panicled racemes. The Alleghany white alder (C. acuminata) has larger 

 leaves and flowers than the preceding, blooms a little later and is barely as 

 profuse. Both species bloom in August and sometimes last into September, 

 and on account of their pretty, white, fragrant flowers and amenability to 

 cultivate in our gardens, are well worth introducing and growing. 



Ilydraugea Pamculata Grauditlora is in my opinion one of the grandest and 

 showiest shrubs in cultivation. I am well aware that many people regard it 

 as coarse, gaudy and inelegant, but I do not, and the bigger its flower bunches 

 are, the better I like them; indeed I strive to have them big. It is in per- 

 fection in late August and early September. I keep my old plants thin, prune 

 them hard back every winter, and as the young sprouts appear in spring, rub 

 off the weaker ones, and save only two or three dozen of the strongest ones 

 to each large bush, for I prefer a bunch of blossoms that will fill a peck meas- 

 ure, rather than forty little bunches that together would not fill a bushel. 



Chinese Tamirix is one of the most lovely, elegant and copious of all 

 garden shrubs, no matter what their season of blooming may be ; and, too, it 

 is the hardiest of its race. Our largest clump is 10 to 12 feet high, and as 

 much, or more, across, and is growing on a south-facing slope, in an open 

 situation, and sandy land. It began to bloom about the first of August, but 

 will not be in its finest blooming condition until the first of September. 



Daphne Creorum is a pretty, flat-growing little evergreen shrub, that 

 blossoms full in early spring, and again almost a full crop in late summer and 

 full. Our plants just now are like pink mats. It loves a cool, moist bed, but 

 at the same time a well-drained one. There is an impression around here that 

 it is not reliably hardy, but, so far as the intensity of frost is concerned, that 

 is not so. At Andover, in Massachusetts, where they have 10° to 20° 

 more frost in winter than we have here (Long Island), this little daphine 

 thrives and grows with the utmost luxuriance, and its branches root along as 

 they spread along; but they do not do that in our hot, dry laud. 



Pruning Shrubs. — Shrubbery which has just been devastated by the shears 

 of the amateur trimmer, tersely remarks a correspondent of the Philadelphia 

 Press, calls forth a good deal of commiseration at this season. AVhen the 

 mania for cutting seizes the owner of uneducated shears he begins to set them 

 at work to reduce every shrub to one form. The tops may all be shorn off 

 level, or they may be clipped into globes or all the branches shortened in to 

 give length. The one unvarying rule of procedure is to treat every plant in 

 exactly the same way, and inasmuch as every plant has individual peculiarities 

 and all the species have verified habits of growth, and are used for different pur- 

 poses, the cast-iron rule of uniformity is fatal. No universal law can be laid 

 down, but for shrubs grown for their flowers there are a few simple directions 

 which no one should neglect. 



The shrubs which bloom early in the spring should, of course, never have 

 their pruning in the autumn. The flower buds of such varieties are formed 

 on the wood made during the summer, and when those branches are cut off 

 there can be no bloom, for no buds are left to open. Early flowering spiraeas 

 for example, like the Spiraea ihunbergii, have buds almost ready to open now. 

 In the warm days of early December some of them did open. But they will 

 pass safely through the winter and be ready to burst into bloom under the 

 influence of the earliest genial spring days. Wait till after they have bloomed 

 and then cut them sharply in. This will encourage the growth of new wood 



64 



