THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 289 



GARDEN" TEEES. 



{Illustrated with Coloured Plate of the Golden-leaved Alder.) 



[HE season lias returned in which to purchase and plant 

 deciduous trees, and those who begin early will have 

 the best prospect of making a satisfactory end. In the 

 mild autumnal days, when showers are frequent and 

 the ground is warm, trees carefully transplanted make 

 new roots in their new positions with great rapidity, and in the 

 succeeding spring present their leaves and flowers so freely and 

 vigorously as to afford no hint in their appearance of having lately 

 changed their place. But with every delay there is an augmentation 

 of the injury which every tree must inevitably suffer by removal. 

 In the first case the injury is trifling, and recovery therefrom rapid. 

 The longer we defer to plant, the more serious is the injury, and 

 the recovery is slow in a corresponding degree, so that it comes to 

 this at last, that trees planted in the spring are as likely to die as 

 to live, and to move a tree when it is coming into leaf, is to put its 

 life in jeopardy. 



On the subject of planting, the foregoing remarks are all that 

 we can afford space for at present. The prevailing poverty of 

 gardens troubles us, and having to accompany the plate of the 

 golden alder with a few remarks, we embrace the occasiou to say 

 that ornamental trees are not made enough of in our gardens, the 

 tendency of planters being towards forest trees rather than to such as 

 we may properly call " pictorial," or perhaps more properly garden 

 trees. The immense variety of majestic, graceful, and even of gro- 

 tesque forms at our command, the diversities of colours of leaves 

 and flowers, the changing aspects of those that present us now with 

 tender green leafage, now with wondrous sheets of bloom, and anon 

 acquire the fiery hues that accompauy the falling of the leaf, afford 

 a succession of delights to those who have planted wisely and made a 

 proper distinction in the selection of their trees between the garden 

 and the park, between the dressed ground and the rustic woodland, 

 or far-stretching forest. Of all places in the world where beautiful 

 trees appeared to be best appreciated, the suburbs of London must 

 have honourable mention. Indeed the rural surroundings of the 

 great metropolis are rich in whatever money can buy and taste 

 dispose of, and the occasional demonstrations of mere cockneyism 

 are swamped out, as it were, from the general aspects of the out- 

 door world by the bountiful displays of high-class arborescent vege- 

 tation. But there is room for improvement here as elsewhere, and we 

 look forward to the development of a taste for true garden trees, 

 and propose to promote it by these observations, and the lists of 

 selected subjects that will supplement them. 



Beautiful trees are not despised in this country, though the 



dwellers in towns give less attention to them than they should for 



their own bodily and spiritual health ; and those who profess to 



love trees, manifest their love in a way too cheap and hasty to Becure 



vol. ti. — no. x. 19 



