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GARDENERS' CHRONICLE 



are lackiny in plants which cheer as the seascju ends, and 

 induce them to trive more attention to them. 



There are. and will no doubt continue to be, differences 

 of opinion as to whether Fall or Spring planting of hardy 

 roses gives the best results. At one time I was vci^ mucn 

 prejudiced in favor of Spring, but plantings made in the 

 Fall of recent years have convinced me that Fall planting 

 gives far more satisfaction. From Spring plantings, I am 

 satisfied that in Xew England from one-fourth to one- 

 third of the plants set out either die or merely exist. This 

 is not strange when it is remembered that nearly all the 

 Spring planted stock has been carried over Winter in 

 storage houses and is, in too many cases, badly dried U]) 

 and shrivelled. It is hardly surprising that, unless in the 

 hands of those who will give it the best attention, a large 

 proportion will die. Nurserymen are swamped with 

 orders in Spring and it is often very late when orders 

 are filled. It is quite otherwise in the Fall when nurseries 

 are rarely overtaxed to keep abreast of orders and when 

 all roses are dug from the field as wanted and received 

 by the buyer in a plump, fresh condition. 



In my experience, the last half of October and the first 

 half of November is the ideal time to plant hardy roses 

 in New England and no doubt the planting season could 

 be very well extended further south, (liven well prepared 

 ground, careful planting, which means spreading out the 

 roots well and firming the soil thoroughly about them 

 and also deep planting, and before the ground freezes up- 

 hilling each plant with soil and later furnishing a mulch 

 of leaves, meadow hay, straw, or litter, there will be a far 

 smaller percentage of deaths from Fall than Spring plant- 

 ing. There is simply no comparison in the growth of the 

 two plantings. I have taken up plants when hilling them 

 up and have been pleased to see the quantities of white 

 fibrous roots the Fall planted stock, was sending out. I 

 have no doubt, however, that most of the readers of the 

 Gardeners' Chronicle of America will continue to de- 

 pend on Spring planting of hardy roses. If so, I should 

 counsel them to buy their plants even thus late and bury 

 them over ^\'inter on a well drained piece of ground, so 

 that they can be planted just as soon as the ground is open 

 in Spring. Try this plan, and buy a few others in Spring 

 and if you will carefully compare results you will be ready 

 to both buy and plant your roses in the Fall of another 

 year. Hybrid teas can be just as successfully planted in 

 Fall as hvlirid perpetuals, polyanthas, climbers and rugosas. 

 ■■:■- :;: ^ 



There has been an unusually gfwd demand for all hardy 

 bulbs this season. The Breeder and Darwin tulips are 

 being called for more than ever and the fact that the pow- 

 ers that be in Washington have temporarily relented and 

 permitted the importation of snowdrops, scillas, chiono- 

 doxas, and a few other bulbs which have been debarred for 

 a year or two and which no one seems to he able to pro- 

 duce here, is good news to many garden lovers. .Most of 

 these bulbs hjok best when naturalized in grass land where 

 the grass will not be cut until the foliage on the bulbs has 

 matured, antl in planting them they should be scattered by 

 the hand and planted where they drop in order to look 

 natural. The short trumjjet Narcissi are much better for 

 naturalizing than the big trumpet sorts. Of the latter. 

 such old sorts as I-'mperor, Emi)ress, and Princeps, look 

 well and jiersist from year to year, while such kinds as 

 Henry Irving, Golden Spur, and Glory of Leiden jjrove 

 unreliable. The short trum])et sorts look much more 

 pleasing in a naturalized state than the .sorts just named. 

 Of the older sorts which last well from year to year I 

 would .select Poeticus. Leedsii, Mrs. I^angtry, and I'.arri 

 consi)icuus which are hard to beat. \'ot many realize how 



splendidly the Darwins succeed in grass, and they do not 

 run out as quickly as might be imagined. A tulip which 

 succeeds especially well in grass is the brilliant Ges- 

 neriana spathulata ; perhaps too high a color to suit many 

 but suitably located it will be found hard to beat. One 

 iif the very best bulbs in grass is .Scilla (Puschkinia 

 liljanotica) which increases very satisfactorily, and should 

 be more largely planted. Fritillaria meleagris allia is 

 another bulb which should be more planted in this way. 



So far I have been unable to learn of any American 

 grower who has succeeded in making a success of the 

 field culture of scillas, chionodoxas, galanthus, fritillarias 

 and others of the "dangerous" bulbs which have been 

 debarred fur several years, but are now temporarily pro- 

 curable. Seeing the keen delight amateur gardeners ob- 

 tain from the culture in even a very small way of these 

 lovely little early flowering bulbs and the fact that their 

 commercial culture seems to be too much for our hardy 

 bulb specialists, I hope the Federal Horticultural Board 

 will change its attitude and permit these simple, early 

 tlowering and popular bulbs to come in unrestricted 

 hereafter. They are our first harbingers of Spring, and 

 we can ill afford to dispense with them. 

 ■■;■ ■■:■ * 



.V friend who is superintendent of a large private 

 estate in New- England, and who has just returned from 

 an extended tour of Great Britain, finds that the great 

 war in no wise decreased the love of horticulture in the 

 people of that island. He attended some of the largest 

 flower shows, including Shrewsbury, Glasgow, London 

 and Liverpool and the quantity and quality of the ex- 

 hiliits as well as the tremendous crowds of garden lovers 

 who attended them amazed him. This gentleman says 

 that the Glasgow show was the greatest of all, even 

 surpassing Shrewsbury, which latter had 100,000 paid 

 admissions on the second day. When we stop and re- 

 flect that this attendance probably equals, even if it does 

 not exceed the gross attendance at all our Spring exhi- 

 bitions or all our Fall shows combined, it is easy to see 

 that the flame of horticultural enthusiasm is undimmed 

 over there as yet. Another statement made by my friend 

 was that when it comes to staging roses, carnations, sweet 

 peas, phloxes, groups of herbaceous plants, and vege- 

 tables effectively, we know practically nothing in Amer- 

 ica. In mass production we stand high, but when it 

 comes to arrangement we are simply not in tlie same 

 class as our cousins across the ocean. It is good to have 

 a little conceit knocked out occasionally, and I wonder if 

 we had suft'ered as they have, and still are sufferin.g, if 

 ]icssimism and not oi)timism would not prevail in horti- 

 cultural circles here. 



* * * 



Albert C. Burrage, president nf the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society as well as of the American Orchid 

 Society, visited 17 leading orchid establishments on tin' 

 Euro])ean continent recently while visiting there. 1 

 asked him what impressed him most, and lie said the re- 

 mai-kablc cleanliness and general thrift of the bidk of 

 the establishments \'isited and the tremendous culture of 

 Gymbidiums. .\t one big commercial plant, house after 

 house of the.se plants was seen, including almost num- 

 berless (|uantities of seedlin.gs of the very best crosses. 

 The owner stated that with a return to more normal con- 

 ditions in I'Airope they had faith that there would be .in 

 enormous demand for these plants which coidd be grown 

 fairly cool, flowered freely, and produced flowers of 

 .great lasting ([ualilies. It is evident, therci'ore. that 

 Cymbidiums ;ire destined to be one of the .great orchids 

 of the near future, and the i)roducin,g of species which 

 (Cniiliitucd oil f>ii>;r 27X) 



