5S- 



JOURNAL OP HOETIOOLTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER, 



[ July 16, 1874. 



kitchen garden is seven acres, walled round, and its crops all 

 looked well, and were evidence of good cultivation. Pears are 

 abundant, and so are the Plums and Cherries, both on stan- 

 dards and walls, but Apples are a total failure. This may be 

 accounted for by the frosts, which usually occur earlier, not 

 occurring this year until the Apple trees were in blossom. At 

 present the only glazed structures are a late vinery and an 

 orchard house, but others are to be erected. The Peach, Nec- 

 tarine, and Apricot trees, all grown in 12-inch pots plunged to 

 the rim in the border, wero abundantly fruitful, and all past 

 ihe dangerous period of their stoning — dangerous only, I think, 

 when proper culture is neglected. 



Proceeding to the pleasure grounds I passed the apiary, of 

 which no other rema)'k is needed than that the bees are all in 

 the old bell-shaped hives. The dressed grounds are about four 

 acres in extent, and are chiefly lawn. Facing the west front on 

 the lawn is a square enclosure, as shown in our woodcut {tig. 21) 

 the hedge 3 feet high of chpped Yew, and the space within is 

 occupied by variously-shaped flower beds. The Eoses — whether 

 bush, or standard, or against the walls — were most healthy, 

 most profusely flowered, and the coloured flowers intense in 

 all their tints. 



The Yew hedges are the great charaeteristic of the grounds. 

 One broad walk some hundreds of yards in length, with hroad 

 turf on each side, and that turf terminating at the foot of a 

 lofty Yew hedge, passes in a straight line from the west front 

 of the house ; and the appearance of the house from the most 

 distant end of the walk is very effective. Another broad walk 

 full 100 yards long, at right angles with the other, has similar 

 hedges, but on the turf on each side is a row of thirty-two very 

 symmetrical Irish Yews, that are in good accord with the other 

 arrangements of the garden. 



Various spaces enclosed by lofty clipped Yew hedges are in 

 other parts of the garden. One of them will in the course of 

 years form a circular domed room, for the hedge is clipped so 

 as to bend inwards with that object in view, and the branches 

 of a Yew planted in the centre are spreading out to meet those 

 of the hedge. 



Although a notice ia posted up at each of the park gates 

 that " trespassers will be prosecuted according to law," I was 

 allowed to be an exception, and am grateful to the gardener, 

 Mr. G. Nesbit, for his courtesy and attention. It is usual to 

 add somo praise of the gardener's ekilfulness ; but I shall only 

 paraphrase the epitaph on Sir Christopher Wren — " Go to the 

 gardens and look around." 



From the gardens I passed into the park ; it and the gardens 

 are four miles in circumference. The park is of very varied 

 surface and beautifully wooded. The trees of all species are 

 fine and ancestral, but especially the Oaks and Elms. The 

 White-thorns, single-stemmed and trees in size, are Ecattered 

 numerously and singly. In one part of the park, unfortunately 

 far from the house, are many good Araucarias, and some of 

 the finest Deodars and Picea Nordmaunianas I have ever seen. 

 Their stems at i feet from the ground are nearly 12 inches in 

 diameter, and the Deodars must be 50 feet and the Piceas 

 40 feet high. They are all vigorous, and with branches out- 

 spread all round to the surface of the turf. They are evidence 

 that the soil and situation suit Conifers, and suggest that those 

 I have noticed deserve to be companioned so as to form a 

 pine turn. — G. 



MR. T. APPLEBY. 



Very early in our career we had Mr. Thomas Appleby on 

 our permanent staff of contributors, and he only left us to 

 occupy what promised to be a more lucrative position. Rheu- 

 matism and paralysis have vanquished him. He is now 

 seventy-nine, and requires aid in the closing period of life. He 

 has been elected to a pensionership of the Gardeners' Benevo- 

 lent Institution, but he wUl receive no assistance from it until 

 next October, and is now in great distress. We ask our 

 readers, therefore, to aid him. Any donation, however small, 

 may be sent to him at his lodging, 263, Morton Street, Park 

 Avenue, Longsight, Manchester. 



were cut out of the branches. At Charpennes a Rose-grower 

 rushing out to cover his glass had his hands fearfully lacerated. 

 On the 2nd and 3rd of July the heat was excessive, exceeding 

 90° in the shade.— W. Pacl. 



The Rose Show at Lyons is put off to September owing to 

 a hailstorm, or rather an icestorm, which occurred on the 

 2(Uh of June. Pieces of ice as large as one's fist fell, weighing 

 1} lb., which broke nearly all the glass in the greenhouses, 

 many of the windows, chipped pieces off the walls, and broke 

 the tiles on the houses in many places. The flowers and beds 

 of the Roses were destroyed, and pieces of bark and wood 



INFLUENCE OF THE GRAFT. 



In a translation of the work of George Gallesion on the 

 Orange family, published in the New Orleans Home Journnl, 

 we find these observations on the effect of grafting on the fruit, 

 and its connection with the stock : — ■ 



We must acknowledge that the graft docs influence all 

 that belongs to the development of the vegetable organs, as 

 well as culture and the soil. A graft is an individual which is 

 forced to live upon a root which is strange to it, and not regu- 

 larly adapted for its natural nutrition. But this root is equally 

 assimilated to the soil. If its organs are able to furnish the 

 graft with all the aliment it is capable of assimilating, or more, 

 this latter may take on a wonderful growth, which it might 

 never have done upon its own root, or it may remain feeble 

 and slender if the root which sustains it is not capable of supply- 

 ing it with all the aliment it requires. These different circum- 

 stances can, as well as culture, bring about the phenomena 

 that the Service Tree of the hunters presents when grafted 

 upon the White Thorn, Mespilus Oxyacantha. The Service 

 Tree, Sorbus Aucuparia, grows more rapidly, and acquires 

 more size and fecundity ; and also that of Apple of the fields, 

 which, grafted upon the Apple of Paradise, becomes a little 

 shrub, frail, almost without a trunk, and the branches scarcely 

 attain the height of 3 metres. These phenomena are due 

 solely to the abundance or the lack of nutrition, and present 

 otherwise no changes, except in the greater or less develop- 

 ment of the different parts of their growth. 



Another remarkable effect has been observed in ordinary 

 grafts. Every grafted plant seems to display, at least for a 

 certain period, a luxuriousness of foliation greater than that 

 of the free tree, when the graft has been taken from an indi- 

 vidual of that nature ; but this phenomena is due to a very 

 simple cause. The free tree developes a great number of 

 branches ; it yields fruit only every two or three years, and 

 when it does bear, it sets them on its branches in such a way 

 that it costs great labour to nourish them. From the moment 

 it is grafted there are several changes produced in it. Its 

 wounded and tufted head disappears, and is replaced by the 

 solitary branch which has to nourish itself all the sap of the 

 root. It spreads, it is true, but it never replaces wholly the 

 branches which usually crown the free tree. A grafted tree is 

 always thinner and less tufted ; therefore the foliation is better 

 nourished and handsomer, and the fruits, which are always 

 less numerous, are larger and more savoury. 



Another circumstance, perhaps, also influences the greater 

 elaboration of fruit in grafted plants. The graft unites a 

 branch of one variety to the root of another ; this union being 

 unnatural, forms a sort of a knot at the point of insertion, 

 which arrests the rapidity of the sap's flow. We know that by 

 this artificial retardation in the course of the sap, we succeed in 

 feeding our buds better, and produce thus more fruit buds than 

 leaf. A tree which does not fructify is often rendered fertile 

 by an excoriation near its root. The cultivators of vineyards 

 bend the twigs and break them slightly at the point where they 

 desire fructification to begin ; and I have obtained Oranges of 

 immense size by twisting or crooking the branches which bore 

 them. All these means are well understood by cultivators, 

 and it is not doubtful that their effect is due solely to the 

 greater slowness in the course of sap, which, therefore, influ- 

 ences the quantity and the quality of the fruit. But these are 

 the limits which nature has fixed upon the influence of the 

 graft upon vegetation. It facilitates or hinders their develop- 

 ment, but it never chauges nor modifies their form, their pro- 

 portions, their juices, or their colours ; never has the graft 

 changed a wild Pear into a Butter Pear, nor a Butter into a 

 Muscat Pear ; the fruit of the Bigaradier is never ameliorated, 

 nor does it lose its bitterness by the operation of the graft. 

 I have a root upon which I have already grafted three times 

 upon itself, graft upon graft ; it gives me larger fruit, but the 

 fruit does not otherwise differ from those of the plant which 

 supplied the buds. 



The graft is nothing more than a kind of budding. It 

 places the branch of one plant upon the root of another ; and 

 this branch or sprout which contains in itself the rudiments 

 of the plants wuich should come out of it, only drains from 

 the stem upon which it is fastened the alimentary juices 



