I Sgo. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



15: 



you really get considerable summer into 

 your soul by looking down in January upon 

 a group of t'ornus and Barberries. If you 

 have them adjacent to evergreens, as you 

 should, they are all the liner: and on de- 

 cent winter days you will tind yourself 

 under the Hemlocks warming yourself by 

 closer approach to the tlery bushes. When 

 spring comes, the red color vanishes as the 

 leaves develop new coloring matter, and all 

 the world goes a-greening. Our planting of 

 lawns should always consider the whole 

 year, and they should especially be adapted 

 to relieve the monotonous seasons. 



Mahonia. or American Holly bush, is 

 another of the really wonderful individuals 

 ill our floral family. It is, in fact, a fair 

 candidate for prominence as a natural 

 flower. In May it gives you great balls of 

 gold, as large as a croquet ball, all over a 

 low, spreading, superbly-polished green 

 bush. Then the young 

 growth follows, de- 

 lightfully pink and 

 red. After that, the 

 bush is glorious with 

 its green through 

 autum and winter. 

 Ah: but it is a won- 

 derful piece of Na- 

 ture's art. It should 

 be grown on every 

 lawn in the United 

 States; only in winter. 

 be covered from sun. 



I have referred to 

 the Barberry. There 

 are many varieties, 

 but the best is the 

 English sort that has 

 run wild in our wood- 

 and has become so 

 naturalized that we 

 may speak of it as a 

 native. This grows 

 to a height of twelve 

 feet in dense bushy 

 form, and in May is 

 overloaded with sweet 

 stems of yellow flow- 

 ers that bring thousands of bees to feast 

 and gather honey. The odor is very rich, 

 and a few do not like it. The berry is at 

 its best in October, and remains a brilliant 

 crimson all winter, I could not get on 

 without my Barberries, and like them 

 in many parts ot my grounds. When the 

 snow makes a wilderness, this shrub holds 

 out that it is still comfortable weather. 

 The fruit is more valuable than we have 

 generally supposed. 



Two of our very finest natives are Stuartia 

 pentagynia and E.xochorda grandiflora. 

 The former I find hard to hold, and the 

 latter is difficult to propagate. The result 

 is both are rare. But when you have seen 

 an Exochorda in bloom you will never rest 

 content until you get one. Its flower is a 

 clear lace-like white ; and the whole bush 

 is a solid bouquet. I never saw anyone pass 

 near the shrub in bloom without exclama- 

 tions of admiration. Stuartia is as fine. 



To my taste a Hazel bush in November is 

 perfection. All at once, after blooming and 

 fruiting is over, the White Hazel clothes 

 itself from head to foot in a mass of lacini- 

 ated yellow florescence. It is still fine when 

 the early snows gather over it. At the very 

 other end of the season is the Moonwood, 

 also bearing a yellow flower: and a lovely 

 thing it is. 



The term Moonwood is sometimes given 

 to a very different bush, the Hopple or 

 Witch Hopple. This I have never been 

 able to grow on my lawns, but in cool damp 

 wooded hill-s des it is glorious. The flowers 

 resemble tho.se of Hydrangea Thomas Hogg, 

 if seen at a little distance. Whoever gets 

 this located to suit it will have a beauty. 



The Euonymus or Wahoo is one of the 

 least conspicuous of all bushes in flower. 

 Its many, small chocolate-colored flowers 

 are, however, sweet and pretty to one who 

 studies them. The value of this shrub is 

 mainly for the superb show made by the 

 seeds which burst open their caly.x covering 

 in October, and hang like a bundle of flowers 

 all through the late autum weeks. They 

 are generally in prime condition about 

 Thanksgiving, 



These are only a few of the splendid 

 treasures offered by our American woods. 

 In every locality you will find many native 

 sorts that will adorn a lawn. What we 

 need is to cultivate a love for fiowers and 

 foliage and not for novelty. Our growers 

 have been so carried away with the possi- 

 bility of importing something new and 

 j startling each year that they have educated 

 I a false public taste. We are greedy for the 



From our standpoint we consider the 

 walks rather too conspicuous, but this defect, 

 if such it be, is largely counterbalanced by 

 the strong touches of natural gardening. 

 The size of the whole parterre is about 300 

 by iOO feet. 



Seeds and Seed Growing, 

 America is fortunate in the po.ssession of 

 respectable and honorable seed houses. 

 There are many of them, and so few of the 

 opposite class that it is the easiest thing in 

 the world to get good and reliable garden 

 and flower seeds. If our friends will only 

 deal with seedsmen of repute directly, and 

 let the seeds sold on commission in country 

 stores alone, they will run very little risk 

 of not getting seeds that will grow. Our 

 experience with advertising seedsmen is that 

 seeds bought of them directly seldom fail 

 to come up all right if properly treated. 

 Sometimes only we 

 have to find just a 

 little fault that the 

 various strains and 

 varieties of some of 

 the old standard sorts 

 are not kept quite as 

 pure and separate as 

 they might, and also 

 that the seedsmen are 

 in a bad habit of lead- 

 ing us to expect too 

 great things of their 

 novelties. 



In regard to the 

 handling of good seed , 

 after once having ob- 

 tained it. Prof, L, H, 

 Bailey of Cornell Uni- 

 versity gives some ex- 

 cellent advise in a re- 

 cent issue of Garden 

 and Forest, from 

 which we quote: 



There are few good 

 sowers of seed. To 

 buy seeds and to 

 cover them with 

 earth comprise the 

 latest thing from China or the Cape, while a sum of practice with many people, To.sow 

 finer is within a mile of us in its natural well is the first operation to acquire in 



ORNAMENTAL PLANTING AT THE PALM GARDENS AT FRANKFURT-ON-THE-MAINE. 



habitat. I know nothing finer than our 

 wild hill-sides covered vrith Sumac, Elder, 

 and Rubus: or more wonderful than the 

 mountains of Connecticut and Pennsylva- 

 nia covered with Laurel, Azalea, Rhododen- 

 drons, and farther north those with Bitter 

 Sweet , and Cherries, My object is not to give 

 an exhaustive list but to draw attention to 

 our natural neglect of our native beauties. 



Floral Parterre in the Palm Gardens 

 at Frankfort-on-the-Maine 

 The accompanying engraving conveys an 

 idea of the study which German gardeners 

 give to elaborate embellishment. It repre- 

 sents plan of the Floral Parterre in the 

 Palm gardens at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, 

 an institution which good authorities in 

 Germany are pleased to call a High School 

 I of the Art of Gardening, The plan of the 

 i floral part was designed by Garden Director 

 Heinrich Siesmayer, 



The three plats occupied with fountains 

 are lavishly adorned with bedding plants in 

 arabesque style, and this could not do other- 

 wise than give a fine effect. We feel like 

 complimenting the designer for having 

 known just where to stop. To have carried 

 the same style of adornment to the outlying 

 plats would have resulted in spoiling all. 



The engraving shows how these marginal 

 plats were treated, to offset the artificial 

 style of the flower beds by conformity to 

 nature's ways in their surroundings. Here 

 we have only lawn and irregular groups of 

 trees and shrubs, and indeed fine examples 

 of such arrangement. 



gardening; propagation by cuttings is the 

 second. Two or three general rules are 

 fully as important as many of the ex- 

 plicit instructions; (I) Do not be in a 

 hurry. In all my teachings how to sow it 

 is necessary to make this important point. 

 It means taking an abundance of time to 

 prepare the soil and to provide proper con- 

 ditions. Ten seeds well sown are more 

 valuable than fifty half sown, and as a rule, 

 the more valuable the plants to be grown 

 the more imperative is this rule, (2) Avoid 

 shortcuts, which are wholly artificial. In 

 all the long catalogues of compounds de- 

 vised to hasten germination. I do not know 

 one which is worth its cost or trouble. It is 

 always legitimate to hasten germination, 

 but it must be done by perfecting natural 

 or normal conditions. (:S) In cases of doubt 

 as to the proper method of handling rare or 

 choice seeds, sow in installments, at inter- 

 vals. This means experiment. With prac- 

 tice comes an almost intuitive faculty to 

 determine at once what are the proper 

 methods of dealing with seeds with which 

 we had never had experience. But until 

 this faculty comes, safety demand caution. 

 And some people never acquire the faculty. 

 Seed-sowing comprises three distinct sub- 

 jects: (1) Selection of seed: (3) treatment of 

 the seed preparatory to sowing, (.3i the sow- 

 ing itself. The commonest cause of failure 

 In seed-sowing is to much moisture. This 

 is particularly true in the case of old and 

 weak seeds. Seeds from afar, or which I 

 have reason to suppose possess low vitality, 

 are never watered directly. 



