1880. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



69 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



Lilies. — As a general thing the Lily is 

 uot a success in most gardens. This is 

 however chiefly from improper soil being 

 used, or their being put into improper situ- 

 ations. The plants rather like the open sun- 

 li!i;ht, but the roots abominate hot ground, espe- 

 cially when stiff or clayey. In Professor Sar- 

 gent's grounds at Brookline, Mass., they are 

 planted with the Rhododendrons, and are a mag- 

 nificent success. Here the Rhododendrons 

 shield the bulbs from the hot sun. It is besides 

 an excellent idea as a mere matter of garden 

 taste, for the Rhodo'dendrons are all over blos- 

 soming before the Lilies flower, and so the 

 flowering of the beautiful evergreens seems to 

 be prolonged till late in the summer, when the 

 lilies disappear. 



Disfigured Lawns. — The Farm Journal 

 notes : " Germantown, where the editor of the 

 Gardener's Monthly resides, a suburb of 

 Philadelphia, is admitted to be one of the most 

 beautiful towns in the country. It contains al- 

 most numberless charming residences, and near- 

 ly every place has a front and side yard, more 

 or less extensive. But just now the town is 

 fearfully disfigured by the practice, almost uni- 

 versal, of spreading manure upon every grass 

 plot, so that Germantown presents the appear- 

 ance of a vast collection of cow-yards, lacking 

 only the cows to make the picture complete in 

 its ugliness. It is a pity people will not learn 

 to use concentrated fertilizers to enrich their 

 lawn and door-yards." 



American Plants in England. — The sin- 

 gular neglect of our beautiful American trees in 

 England, seems to extend to our pretty herba- 

 ceous plants. Sir Joseph Hooker, in a recent 

 number of the Botanical Magazine., says: "It is 

 indeed astonishing that the Asters, Helianthus, 

 Rudbeckias, Silphiums, and numbei'less other 

 fine North American herbaceous plants, all so 

 easily grown and so handsome, should be neg- 

 lected in English gardens, and this in favor of 

 carpets, hearthrugs and ribbons — forming pat- 

 terns of violent colors which, though admired 

 from being the fashion on the lawn and borders 

 of our gardens and grounds, would not be tole- 

 rated on the floor of a drawing-room or a bou- 

 doir."' This is the just appreciation of the value 

 of hardy plants which one might expect from a 

 traveler who has seen so many of the most beau- 



tiful and distinct of hardy plants " at home " in 

 all the quarters of the world. 



Improved Potentillas.— Florists must feel 

 indebted to the Garden for showing them in a 

 beautiful chromo, how much beauty there is in 

 these old-fashioned flowers. Much as we know of 

 their merits we did not know that they had been 

 improved so far. They are double as roses, and 

 of all shades of color between yellow, crimson 

 and rose, beautifully striped. 



Public Roads. — Col. Forney, in a recent 

 Progress, gives the following from a clerical cor- 

 respondent : 



" As yet we have no public roads in America 

 worthy of being named with the roads in the old 

 countries. The public highways here are as 

 smooth, and as hard, and as clean, as Bedford 

 Avenue, or the best roadway in either Central 

 or Prospect Park. They are side-drained or 

 under-drained, and directly after a rain there is 

 no mud upon them. They are for the most part 

 kept in repair by districts, and the work is not ne- 

 glected nor botched. How very different this is 

 from our slipshod methods is grievously well 

 known to all Americans who use private vehi- 

 cles. The national roads of France are under 

 the care and supervision of the General Govern- 

 ment, and as perfect in their way as they can be. 

 It is not to be hoped that our National Govern- 

 ment will undertake enterprises of this nature, 

 but State Legislatures might well enough make 

 laws binding turnpike companies and towns to 

 make and keep roads fairly up to the demands 

 of modern civilization." 



On this Progress remarks: "There is nothing 

 new in all this; nothing that every one of us did not 

 know before, and yet we are slow, very slow, to 

 profit by the lesson it teaches." And we may 

 add that the reason why we are " slow to profit" 

 is that nobody has any plan whereby our roads 

 may be made any better. "We know already 

 that "State Legislatures can make laws," but 

 no one tells State Legislatures what laws to 

 make. We in Philadelphia know what sort of 

 laws uninstructed legislatures make, and when 

 a road is to be improved the person who desires 

 the improvement knows to his great cost what 

 is the expense of instructing them. 



Now the Gardener's Monthly has made 

 a proposition for a general law for the improve- 

 ment of roads. It is, that when a good macada- 

 mized road can be made for a certain small per- 

 centage (to be fixed) of the value of the land 



