Flo'vuering Plants Jor Public Laums. 5SS 



Art, VIII. On the most suitable Description of Flowering Plants 

 for planting in Beds and Groups on the Lawns of Public Gardens. 

 By S. S. 



I OBSERVE, with great pleasure, that our public squares in this 

 country, and more particularly in England, are beginning to be 

 ornamented with flower-beds, in the same manner as they are on 

 the Continent. I have lately returned from Vienna, by Munich, 

 Frankfort, Strasburg, Paris, Brussels, Ghent, London, York, and 

 Newcastle ; and at most of these cities I found gardens on the ram- 

 parts, or other public promenades, more or less gay with the 

 flowers of pelargoniums of difi^rent kinds, fuchsias, calceolarias, 

 petunias, and similar plants. On my arrival here in my native 

 city, I was rather disappointed to find the flowers in the beds to 

 be chiefly of the commoner sorts of annuals ; such as lupines, 

 marigolds, prince's-feather, convolvuluses, and such plants ; and 

 these, too, not in masses by themselves, as they almost always 

 are on the Continent and in England, but mixed together, in 

 such a way as to give a general sameness to all the beds, not only 

 of any one garden, but of all the gardens in a neighbourhood. 

 I refer in a particular manner to the flowers in the Queen Street 

 gardens ; but I might also refer to the gardens at Dalkeith, and 

 to a number of others within ten miles of this city. 



On mentioning this circumstance to some intelligent gardeners, 

 they informed me that they were not ignorant of the superior 

 effects produced by masses of green-house plants, such as pelar- 

 goniums, fuchsias, &c., but that their employers were, in general, 

 unwilling to go to the expense of green-houses, or flued pits, to 

 protect the plants through the winter ; preferring, if they were 

 at any expense of this kind, to force fruits. If such be the case 

 generally in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, it surely argues 

 a great want of taste in the inhabitants, or otherwise much igno- 

 rance of what constitutes the chief beauty of the scenery of public 

 squares, and the lawns of suburban villas, in other places, more 

 particularly in England. That the climate of Edinburgh is per- 

 fectly suitable to growing the plants mentioned in the open air, 

 during summer, is placed beyond a doubt by the success which 

 attends the culture of Cape heaths, and other Cape plants, in the 

 open air in the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, in which I have just 

 seen the fan palm growing like a whin [furze] bush in the open 

 ground. 



young sycamore, with its broad and vigorous leaves, is, to my eye at least, not 

 a handsome or interesting object ; but when it has arrived at maturity, and 

 the spray has begun to curl and crinkle, then the size of the leaves is much 

 diminished, and it exhibits such magnificent masses of foliage, such light and 

 shade, as are not to be rivalled, perhaps, by any of our native trees, except 

 the oak. 



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