THE 



GARDENER'S MONTHLY 



AND 



HORTICULTURIST. 



DEVOTED TO HORTICULTURE, ARBORICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS. 



Edited by THOMAS MEEHA.N. 



Vol. XXIV. 



JUNE, 1882. 



Number 282. 



Flower Garden and Pleasure Ground. 



SEASONABLE HINTS. 



It sometimes seems to one endeavoring to 

 direct the public mind, and improre the public 

 taste, that his labors are all but thrown away. 

 As we go through distant cities, and note how 

 barbarous practices and aboriginal indifference 

 prevail it seems bad enough ; but the conceit as 

 to the value of eflFort in public enlightenment is 

 completely dissolved when we look around on 

 the garden practices about our own Philadelphia 

 city. Trees, properly planted rather thickly at 

 first, are left to fight for life with each other as 

 they grow up; the desire for rapid growing trees 

 induces the planting of rubbish, which grow too 

 fast at last, only to be hacked by tree butchers, 

 become miserable eye-sores, and very soon after 

 sicken from disease, and meet premature death. 

 Thousands of sound, healthy trees are planted 

 only to die from the ignorance of removal ; and 

 valuable trees and shrubs, beautiful if pruned as 

 true horticultural intelligence would have them 

 pruned, are cropped over annually like the head 

 of a prize fighter, and make the most abomina- 

 ble looking objects instead of the ornamental 

 trees and shrubs which nature designed them to 

 be. We want another Moses to lay down some 

 horticultural commandments, and to press them 

 on to public observance with all the zeal and 



energy of the great Hebrew leader. He thought 

 he had covered all when he forbade his followers, 

 not to make to themselves the likeness of any- 

 thing in the heavens or on the earth, and he 

 never dreamed that there would arise cultivators 

 of plants who would worship objects of their 

 creation, not like to anything either i"n heaven 

 or earth. Surely his holy wrath would be stirred 

 at what he would be compelled to see ! Our ire 

 — the editorial anger — often rises when he passes 

 the city squares, and the grounds around public 

 property. But before the pen is dipped in the 

 ink to record his opinions of " City Fathers," he 

 glances at the grounds of those who love to see 

 them lashed, and it is all the same. Can we 

 expect representatives to do more than the peo- 

 ple they represent? Of course there are some 

 exceptions. Not all public work or all private 

 grounds are disgraceful in a gardening sense. 

 A few are worthy of all praise, but somehow 

 there does not seem enough of these, as there 

 should be after almost a quarter of a century of 

 work in editing a Gardener's Monthly. 



Still we must not lose all heart. We will still 

 have some faith though small, that the seed we 

 sow may here and there grow to a good sized 

 tree, which will not be butchered and torn by 

 the "trimmer's" ignorance. Let us therefore 

 look at once— now at this season — and see how 



