THE 



^^' VORV<- 



Gardeners^ Monthly 



HORTICULTURIST. 



DEi/OTED TO HORTICULTURE. ARBORICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS. 



Edited by THOMAS MEEHAN. 



Volume XXV. 



MAY, 1883. 



Number 293. 



Flower Garden and Pleasure Ground. 



COMMUNICATIONS. 



RANDOM JOTTINGS. 



BY MRS. R. B. EDSON. 



I have made a great discovery, and a somewhat 

 disheartening one, and this is it : It isn't quite safe 

 to beheve everything those very fascinating and 

 altogether delightful creatures, the flower cat- 

 logues, say. I mean absolutely and implicitly, you 

 know ; something you would be willing to swear 

 by — not about, if you were profanely disposed. 



Now, I admire catalogues, and always read them 

 from preface to finis. They have a fascination 

 about them before which the most entrancing 

 novel "pales its ineffectual fires." Their charm, 

 like the wonderful marvel of creation,, is new 

 every spring. I confidently expect to go on 

 reading them with ever fresh delight, to the end of 

 the chapter, and of believing them, in a general 

 way, but not specifically. For instance : What 

 catalogue tells the unsophisticated reader of the 

 disappointing, not to say exasperating, habit of 

 Yucca filamentosa ? It is very beautiful in flower, 

 I admit. It ought to be, after you have waited two 

 years — the usual time for a purchased plant — for 

 the gratification. It is barely possible you may 

 have a like gratification the following year, but the 

 great probability is that when you are asked by all 



your friends if " that plant which bore such beau- 

 tiful white flowers is dead?" (you secretly wish it 

 was) you are forced to point to a mass of shabby 

 leaves, about which are a few shoots and off-shoots, 

 which you have learned by experience will take 

 two or three years more of waiting. They are all 

 very well for large grounds, or to be planted 

 among shrubbery, but if, in your confiding inno- 

 cence (as somebody who shall be nameless, once 

 was), you are led to plant them in a choice and 

 sightly position, woe is you, for a more exasperat- 

 ing and unsightly mass would be hard to find. 



And then there is the whole tribe of Clarkia, 

 Nemophila, Leptosiphon and Godetia, which for 

 general cultivation are utterly worthless. " In a 

 land" — or a garden — "that the sun shines on" 

 they are about as big a delusion as can be found. 



But my pet grievance just now is the new (?) 

 Salvia Bethelli. It is in all the catalogues, and is 

 much praised as " a dwarf plant, with very showy 

 pink flowers." I yielded to the seductive descrip- 

 tion, and bought one. Dwarf? Well, it depends 

 upon what one compares it with. If, for instance, 

 you were comparing it to the "big trees" of Cali- 

 fornia, this Salvia might be fairly considered dwarf, 

 but not otherwise. 



Mine grew to between three and four feet in 

 height before it gave a hint of flowering. It is 

 very long-joiated — some four inches or more — and 



