

r 



VOL. 28. 



I^OYEMBEE, 18T3. 



1^0. 329. 



Garden Topics. 



Colors ill Planting. 



IN our modern American gardens, our latest and strongest aims now seem to be, 

 to gain color, as well as beauty of forms in our plants. Subtropical gardening 

 is exactly adapted to our climate ; our brilliant skies and glorious sunny weather 

 give a possibility and appropriateness to the use of high-colored foliage plants ; and 

 trees of rich hue become mammoth painting on our lawns and in our flower gardens. 

 In The Garden, a correspondent discussing this subject, says justly, garden scenery 

 is brightened immensely by means of color. " The leaves of the new-born summer, the 

 matured ones of autumn — how much they owe to delicate and multitudinous coloring ! 

 But for fresh tenderness of touch, that neither painting nor word-coloring can repro- 

 duce, commend us to the bursting buds of April — the newly unrolled beauty of May 

 leaves. Among these, what more beautiful than the beech and the purple leaved 

 filbert ? There are two or more varieties of each, one larger and of more substance 

 than the other. In fact, of the beech there are many varieties, for the red repro- 

 duces itself from seed, and in a batch of seedlings there are tints of many degrees, 

 ranging from dull greens to those of almost fiery glow. We have, however, never 

 yet seen a seedling to equal in brilliancy the common variety, which is mostly 

 increased by grafting it on the common beech ; and another with larger leaves, that 

 keeps its color later in the autumn. But purple filberts are easily multiplied by 

 means of suckers — a mode of increase not always to be depended upon in purple 

 beeches on their own roots. Beeches seldom produce suckers, yet they occasionally 

 throw little bunches from the surface roots, and I have seen these green on purple 

 seedlings, and purple on grafted plants — rather a singular circumstance. Tbe 

 filbert is also so fully purpled over and through that we never remember to have seen 

 it throw out a green sucker. It is most useful in shrubberies, contrasting admirably 

 with such plants as lilacs, laburnums, guelder roses, deutzias, etc. It seems actually 

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