84 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



various honeysuckles. Amoiii^st the hir^e 

 plants that are set out in front of the dwell- 

 ings and restaurants in the streets are 

 several kinds of box, privets, Kuonymus, 

 Laurustinus, standard roses, laurel, etc. 



I'AKIS PARKS. 



The parks in Paris generally contain large 

 and fine collections of plants of all kinds, 

 forest trees deciduous and evergreen, 

 shrubby-herbaceous plants, bedding plants, 

 annuals, and bulbous plants. The ap- 

 parent effort seems to be to keep up a 

 continuous display of flowers from earliest 

 spring to latest fall, and from week to week 

 one observes the flower beds completely 

 transformed. The early flowering bulbs 

 with which the plots are filled in the fall, are 

 succeeded by pansies, hepaticas, and other 

 low-growing early flowering perennials ; 

 these, are in turn, succeeded by annuals in full 

 bloom, or some of the bedding out plants. 

 This sort of flower garden was seen at its 

 best within the exhibition grounds, in the 

 concours made by the large seed-houses 

 and floral establishments. These concours 

 took place every fortnight, or three weeks, 

 and at each successive one, every bed was 

 completely changed. Bulbs of various 

 kinds — hyacinths, tulips, scillas, &c. , in 

 full flower, were set into the plots, pots and 

 all, and at the next concours were replaced 

 by calceolarias, or cinerarias, or ger- 

 aniums ; on the next occasion these were 

 replaced by bulbous begonias, or cannas, 

 or chrysanthemums, and one sort of 

 annuals was succeeded by another, or by 

 mixtures of annuals or herbaceous plants. 

 Our native perennial asters were very 

 largely used and made a very beautiful dis- 

 play. In the same way, one bed of shrubs 

 succeeded another. Lilacs in pots and 

 spireas of several families were followed by 

 rhododendrons. Azalea mollis, Ceanothus, 

 Althea frutex, or kalmias, and so the 



transformation went on. Many of our 

 own common native shrubs, dwarf choke- 

 cherries, Pyrus arbutifolia, Spirea sali- 

 cifolia, viburnums, &c. , taking their place 

 with others in the general transformations. 

 Canadian ferns, too, were largely used in 

 permanent beds and clumps. 



Amongst the annuals used in these 

 renewals, were the everlasting acrocliniums, 

 rhodanthe, helichrysum, and the feath- 

 ered celosia. The campanulas, chiefly the 

 dwarf species and varieties, Carpathica, 

 Sibirica and Venus looking-glass. Chinese 

 asters were very largely used, so were the 

 dwarf blue ageratums, aubrictias, 



brachycomes, browallias, centaureas, for- 

 get-me-nots, asperulas, larkspurs and 

 whitlavias. Amongst the most interesting 

 yellows were the Gamolepis, Tagetes, 

 Linaria multipunctata, pansies, antirrhi- 

 mum, dwarf erysimums, dwarf zinnia, 

 Tagetes signata pumila, French and African 

 marigolds, Matricaria, golden ball. Small 

 white flowers that lent themselves readily to 

 that kind of work were the sweet alyssum, 

 Arabis alpina, candytufts ; pansies, the 

 large flowered daisies, dwarf asters, 

 godetias, phloxes, the Gypsophila muralis, 

 Saponarias, schyzanthus statice, Humea 

 elegans, with many of the annual grasses, 

 furnished light feathery effects, while 

 Virginian stock, Nemesia floribunda, silene, 

 varieties of petunia and of dwarf compact 

 crimson phlox drummondi made dense rosy 

 crimson beds. Amaranthus bicolor, tricolor, 

 and Melancholicus ruber, supplied beautiful 

 foliage. 



The godetias, especially the varieties of 

 Whitneyi, made beds that at a short dis- 

 tance were mistaken for large flowered ger- 

 aniums. Some of the most beautiful 

 masses of blue flowers were made -of the 

 single blue aster, Callistephus hortensis 

 the original of all the immense number of 

 varieties of the Chinese aster, and for fall 



