302 THE GARDENER. [Sept. 



the shape of a stately tree or graceful shrub, features which should be 

 held far too sacred to be encroached upon or blurred by any paltry bed 

 of evanescent flowers. Take as a public illustration of what we mean 

 by this the long series of flower-beds which skirt Park Lane in Hyde 

 Park. These beds form a far too crowded, continuous, and monotonous 

 string of flower-beds, more like a nurseryman's trial ground than a 

 flower-garden. To our mind the turfing up of half the beds here would 

 improve its appearance very much, and give it some repose in the 

 shape of more greensward. But our special object in this case is 

 to point out the "studied insult" which has been off'ered to the 

 forest-trees in this bed-making in Hyde Park, by placing round 

 their trunks small butter-pat circles of such as Alternantheras, Ver- 

 benas, and paltry succulents. It is to be regretted that here every 

 place where there is room for a bed has been thus nibbled up, and it is a 

 pity that any such misplaced beds as those round the base of the forest- 

 trees should be exhibited in so public a place, to be perhaps copied by 

 others. It is, however, so outrageous an insult to the majestic trees, 

 that there is not much risk of its being largely copied. The spaces of 

 green turf preserved round these trees would have given some repose 

 where it is much wanted. This crowding of all natural features out of 

 any given piece of ground by the everlasting fritter of tiny beds, is 

 surely no sign of progress ; on the contrary, it reveals a vitiated taste 

 in gardening which should not be encouraged, and we mention this 

 public exhibition of the thing as illustrative of what is undesirably 

 common in laying out smaller places nowadays. In making a garden 

 on perhaps an acre or two, there can be no greater mistake or abuse of 

 a subject than the attempt to have a lake because So-and-so has one, 

 to have a hill because So-and-so has a hill, or to have a dell and a 

 rockery because somebody else has a rockery and a dell, and attempt 

 a chromatic display of whirligigs as well, and all this without taking 

 into careful consideration the natural capabilities of the site itself. 



USIISTG STOITES IN POTTING. 



Have any of your readers ever used stones purposely in potting such things as 

 Vines and Pines ? It is the custom to pick these carefully out of the compost 

 before using it ; and I confess, myself, to a prejudice against them hitherto, 

 though I am not prepared, I must admit, to give a very good reason for the 

 same. I am led to ask the above question from an idea which occurred to me 

 the other day when examining the roots of a Pine-Apple plant which had been 

 turned out of the pot. As has often been observed in the case of potted 

 plants, the roots were all at the side of the pot. Just to see how far they had 

 availed themselves of the body of soil between the stem and the pot, I poked 

 the soil out at the bottom of the ball from the top. So few were the roots, 



