574 



THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE. 



iNovejibee 17, 1888. 



the advertisements of the Mangels of such dimen- 

 sions that sheep were grazing placidly on the roots 

 while overshadowed completely by the foliage. 



Teddington Chrysanthemum Show.— This 



was held on the 8th inst., and was well attended. 

 Mr. G. A. Bishop, The Grove Gardens, Teddington, 

 won the Challenge Cup, with a good stand, and 

 other leading exhibits were from Messrs. Munro, 

 Bates, Coombs, and Allen. In the section for fruits 

 and vegetables the chief prizes were taken by Messrs. 

 Bates, G. Smith, C. Garrod, W. Pain, T. Furrow, 

 and J. Furrow. Cottagers and amateurs were well 

 represented, and table decorations, bouquets, sprays, 

 &c, were pretty. 



PHAL/ENOPSIS AMETHYSTINA — Of this little 

 gem — for such it must be described, being both 

 small and elegant — two plants may now be seen 

 flowering at Kew. An erect peduncle of but a 

 few inches high is thrown out of the tuft of leaves, 

 on which the flowers are borne. The sepals and 

 petals are white, the front lobe of the lip rosy- 

 purple, while the side lobes are beautifully marked 

 with radiating lines of the same colour on a white 

 ground. A woodcut of the plant may be found in 

 the Gardeners' Chronicle for 1870, p. 1731. The 

 native country has been somewhat vaguely stated as 

 Sondaic Islands. 



INSECTICIDES. — Mr. A. J. Cook, the Professor 

 of Zoology and Entomology at the Agricultural Col- 

 lege of Michigan, relates in the Bulletin of the Col- 

 lege for September, that, " it pays remarkably well 

 to spray " Apple trees to prevent the injuries inflicted 

 by the Codlin moth. The poison used is arsenite of 

 lime (London Purple), used in the proportion of one 

 pound to 100 gallons of water. The spray should not 

 be used till after the blossoms fall from the trees. 

 " Spraying with insecticides is becomingexceedingly 

 profitable," says the Professor, The pump used is a 

 force-pump, which might be bought by one farmer 

 and lent out to his neighbours, or purchased by 

 co-operation. The spraying may be repeated once 

 or twice in the course of the season. Obviously, it 

 should not be used except when the fruit is in a very 

 young immature state. 



JULIETTE DORDON. — Among the new Chrysan- 

 themums this is remarkable for the concentric way 

 in which its colours are arranged ; thus, the centre 

 is white, surrounded by a broad belt of lilac, while 

 the tips of the florets are white, thus forming a 

 third circle outside the others. 



Truro Chrysanthemum Society. — The 



Truro people have established a society for the 

 encouragement of the cultivation of the Chrysanthe- 

 mum, and held their first exhibition on Tuesday and 

 Wednesday, November 6 and 7. The show was 

 regarded as a success by its authors, but the account 

 of it sent to us would seem to point to the fact that 

 a few cultivators took the lion's share of the prizes — 

 a matter that will probably right itself in the future, 

 when more competitors enter the field, and methods 

 of growing and showing the flower are better under- 

 stood. 



Devizes Castle Gardens. — Mr. Thomas 



King, who has had charge of these gardens for so 

 many years, has made arrangements to take these 

 into his own hands, for the purpose of growing fruit 

 and flowers for market. As the present proprietor 

 of the Castle does not at present intend to make it 

 his residence this arrangement has been come to. 



Sphincter Grip Armoured Hose Co.— This 



Company, with its rather grim title, is making a 

 special issue of 25,000 shares of £1 each, in order 

 to develope the resources of the Company, and 

 enable it to meet the great demand upon its manu- 

 facturing capacity. The office of the Company is 

 63, Fore Street, B.C. 



Publications Received.— Native Flowers of 



New Zealand, by Mrs. C. Hetley, part iii. (London : 

 Sampson Low & Co). — Cultural Directions for the 

 Rose, by J. Cranston, 7th ed. (Hereford : King's 

 Acre Nurseries). — The Invisible Powers of Nature, by 

 E. M. Caillard. (London : J. Murray, Albemarle 

 Street). — The Orchids of the Cape Peninsula, by 

 Harry Bolus, F.L.S. (Cape Town, Cape of Good 

 Hope.) 



CHISWICK. 



Dear old Chiswick, " the Kew of horticulture ! " 

 Your leading articles (p. 540), and Mr. Dyer's 

 remarkable letter in your last issue (p. 536), will, it 

 is to be hoped, induce the Council of the Royal 

 Horticultural Society and the Fellows generally to 

 strain every nerve to raise their classical old garden 

 into an institution of national importance and utility. 

 Some portions of Mr. Dyer's letter might have been 

 left unwritten with advantage, especially the innuendo 

 that " in horticulture " opinions very seldom agree, 

 seeing that the same is quite as true " in botany " 

 or any other pursuit, as in gardening. After all, is 

 not a healthy, frank, and courteous difference of 

 opinion the jvery life and strength of any body of 

 men working for a common cause ? While I object 

 strongly to some points in the letter referred to, I 

 cordially agree with Mr. Dyer's main policy, that 

 Chiswick should become to all intents and purposes 

 tie Kew of horticulture. This much is also, 

 as I presume, the idea of the majority of those in any 

 way interested in the question now raised. 



Mr. Dyer's suggestions in the main are so good 

 that I wish he had gone a step further in his 

 suggestions, and given us his views as to the ways 

 and means necessary for carrying out horticultural 

 work and experiment in the Chiswick garden. Mr. 

 Barron has done all that a man crippled for want of 

 necessary funds could do to make Chiswick interest- 

 ing, and the main difficulty with which the best 

 friends of Chiswick have to deal is the question of 

 funds. Money may, as wrongly applied, be "the 

 root of all evil," but the want of it is, and has been 

 of late years, equally against the Chiswick garden 

 ever being " energetically worked in the spirit " 

 which Mr. Dyer advocates so as to make of it " a 

 really living thing." If a policy were all that 

 the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society 

 wanted at the present moment, Mr. Dyer's letter 

 full as it is of acute suggestiveness, would be most 

 satisfactory ; but, as I have said, how can the requi- 

 site funds be obtained to restore Chiswick, and raise 

 it to its proper position as an educational establish- 

 ment on a par with Kew? Chiswick for gardening, 

 and Kew for botany, is a dream we should like to 

 wake up and find a true one. We are all very 

 proud of Kew as the finest botanical garden in the 

 world, and some of us know what it has cost Mr. 

 Dyer to bring it up to its present rate of efficiency, 

 but we do not forget that Kew has the benefit of 

 a Government grant of £20,000 a-year, more or 

 less. If "dear old Chiswick," under Mr. Barron's 

 superintendence, could have had a half or a quarter 

 of this sum annually for the past twenty years, there 

 would have been little necessity for a policy to-day. 



This brings me to a point worth some attention 

 from the real friends of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society at the present time. Mr. Dyer has distinctly 

 shown that between Kew and Chiswick a division of 

 labour and public utility could be carried on with 

 national advantage. This being true, it follows that 

 Chiswick may be as deserving of a Government 

 grant on the one side as Kew is on the other. Now 

 comes the vital question. — Can a Government grant 

 be obtained for the Chiswick garden by the Royal 

 Horticultural Society ? Of course, I know that it 

 will be a difficult thing to obtain ; but the results are 

 so promising, that such a subsidy from the State U 

 worth striving for. But while working for and 

 awaiting State aid, we must do the best we can for 

 ourselves ; and the Society must — as I believe it now 

 really does (see p. 542) — recognise the main fact 

 that its own claim for support and usefulness is 

 entirely based on its garden at Chiswick and the 

 work it can do therein. At present, I am afraid 

 the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society 

 are in much the same plight as the Israelites 

 in Egypt, that is to say, we are all 

 like the taskmasters eagerly demanding our tale of 

 bricks, while denying the straw with which to make 

 or bake them ! The strenuous exertions made by 

 the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society and 

 others interested during the past year, are known only 



to a few, but it is the general desire of all the friends of 

 gardening that their efforts be successful. Amongst 

 the failures the gloomy and deserted " Drill Hall " is, 

 perhaps, the worst, and the one to be least regretted. 

 My own notion is that, better attended and certainly 

 more profitable meetings could be arranged in the 

 Chiswick Garden — a garden, I am sorry to add, 

 almost unkown to and unvisited by gardeners and 

 the owners of gardens, as a body, when they take 

 a holiday in town. The holding of meetings at 

 Chiswick would lead to the advertisment of the 

 Society's garden, which would soon become popular, 

 and it might even derive some profit as a place of 

 public resort by residents in its now populous and 

 not unhealthy neighbourhood. It is pleasant to 

 know that at the meeting of the Royal Horticultural 

 Society's Council, held on October 31, the following 

 resolution was passed — " That the Council of the 

 Royal Horticultural Society fully appreciate the 

 value attached to Chiswick garden, and are anxious 

 to extend and develope its resources to the greatest 

 possible extent for the advancement of horticulture 

 as far as the mems -placed in their hands will allow." 

 The italics are my own, and really prove, or at least 

 indicate, pretty clearly, that a want of sufficient 

 fund is at the bottom of the whole difficulty. F. W. 

 Burbidqe, 



Suggestions for making Chiswick Garden 



more useful and more attractive are now taking a 

 practical form. We may hope that Mr. Thiselton 

 Dyer's article in the Gardeners' Chronicle, and the 

 Editor's comments upon it will be carefully considered 

 by the Council of the Royal Horticultural Society. 



While entirely agreeing with the proposals to 

 establish trial grounds for fruit trees and vegetables, 

 I leave this part of the subject to experts in kitchen 

 gardening ; but hardy herbaceous gardening is my 

 particular hobby, and I cannot lose so good an oppor- 

 tunity of pleading for this being made a specialty at 

 Chiswick. 



There is not, as far as I know, any public garden 

 in England where a collection of choice and uncom- 

 mon hardy plants is grown in such a way as to 

 display them to the best advantage, and to make 

 them attractive to visitors. As Mr. Dyer says, Kew 

 cannot be expected to supply this want. Botanic 

 gardens must contain curious and rare as well as 

 decorative plants, and when, for the sake of helping 

 to instruct, specimens are grouped together in 

 natural classes, the difficulty of making them orna- 

 mental is increased. Strangers who go to Kew only 

 to see beautiful flowers are not edified by whole beds 

 of Hemlocks, and Figworts, and Goosefoots, and 

 Docks, which all the same help to make our national 

 botanic garden contain the best collection of living 

 hardy plants in the world. But visitors would very 

 gladly go to Chiswick to learn what hardy plants 

 are ornamental, and how they may be best displayed, 

 and from Chiswick all weedy subjects would be 

 excluded. 



What I wish to propose may be done with very 

 little expense and labour, if only sufficient space in 

 a suitable situation can be supplied. As I have only 

 been in Chiswick garden once in my life, I cannot 

 from memory enter into local details, but I remem- 

 ber thinking that there was a great deal of room in 

 the flower garden for more and for better flowers. 

 This was perhaps ten years ago, and it may be 

 different now. However, we should want for our 

 purpose three or four long borders, either backed 

 by shrubberies or open on both sides, and entirely 

 free from the roots of trees. Aspect is of some im- 

 portance, a long front to the east being by far the 

 best. We will suppose these borders to be each 

 40 yards long, and about 3 yards wide, and four in 

 number, so we ask for just one-tenth of an acre of 

 surface. Allowing an average of 2 feet square for 

 each specimen — some would take much more, and 

 some much less — we should have room for more than 

 1000 plants. This would probably be twice as many 

 varieties as we should wish to grow at once, but 

 some kinds might be grown in more than one place. 

 The selection of plants would be an important 

 matter of detail ; still more important would be the 



