THE 



Canadian Horticuuurist 







HORTICULTURE IN PARIS. 



HAT the French are a flower-loving" 

 people, one realizes in a very short 

 time spent amongst them. The 

 ^pJ large numbers of people seen 

 hawking flowers in the streets ; the large 

 number of flower shops, which are almost 

 as numerous as bread shops or dairy shops, 

 would convince the most sceptical of that 

 fact. 



Reaching Paris late on a Saturday night 

 in the end of March, in a short walk in the 

 streets, flower sellers were met about every 

 acre, and they were doing a brisk business, 

 violets, primroses (wild), daff"odils, and 

 lilies of the valley, lilacs and roses, with 

 some cytisuses, or kindred plants with 

 yellow flowers, formed their principal stock 

 in trade. Needless to say that at that date 

 the lilacs and roses were forced. The 

 French people take a special pleasure in 

 lilacs, of which they possess a very large 

 number of varieties, many of them of great 

 beauty. In the gardens, on the outskirts of 

 the city, we see them in large numbers, and 

 we find the spikes of cut flowers throughout 

 the entire season. They not only force 

 them, but also retard them. As late as 



October large quantities of them were still 

 in evidence. 



The Paris houses are always well supplied 

 with flowers. They are daily renewed, and 

 one sees the withered plants that have 

 served their purpose, thrown out into the 

 streets with the other rubbish, for the 

 scavengers to carry off during the night or 

 early morning. 



The Paris dwelling houses open into 

 court-yards ; these court-yards, when not 

 paved, are usually planted with a nice assort- 

 ment of the better class shrubs — laurels, 

 rhododendrons, azalea mollis, magnolia, 

 &c. , or, if paved, the plants are set around 

 in large tubs or boxes, and may consist of 

 palms, Araucarias, Aucubas, large ferns, 

 and other plants of that character that may 

 be frequently changed. 



One of the climbers that one often sees is 

 the Wistaria. In the early summer it bears 

 hundreds of long, graceful, pendant clust- 

 ers of blue, or white, flowers. Another 

 beautiful climber is the Bignonia radicans, 

 and almost everywhere the common and 

 large-leaved ivies are seen, less frequent are 

 the clematises, the ampelopses, and the 



