158 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 425. 



should be sown in shallow pans in a compost of fibrous peat, 

 loam and sand and kept in a warm and shady position until 

 germinating. Watering should be attended to regularly and 

 with great care, as the young seedlings are apt to damp oil if 

 the roots are kept too dry and the top too moist. The seed- 

 lings should be pinched frequently to form bushy plants, and 

 kept in a moderately cool and light place in summer. In win- 

 ter they thrive best in a warm greenhouse or conservatory. 



Washington, D. C. 0. 



Mahernia glabrata.— This is a very desirable greenhouse 

 plant, flowering from March until early in summer. It has a 

 rather straggling habit, but can be grown into a neat and com- 

 pact specimen by proper pinching and training. The Oxalis- 

 like flowers are yellow, nodding, very fragrant and borne 

 in pairs on long axillary or terminal peduncles chiefly on 

 lateral branches ; leaves lanceolate, pinnatifid, or coarsely 

 toothed, and the stems are slender and wiry. The plants 

 when well grown are very floriferous, and, although not 

 among the showiest, they are, at least, among the sweetest 

 greenhouse and window plants of this season. After flower- 

 ing they should be allowed to rest and ripen, and any long and 

 straggling shoots may then be pruned back. They should 

 afterward be repotted and plunged during the growing period 

 outside in a cool frame. Plenty of water is necessary in sum- 

 mer. In winter they should be kept quite cool until February 

 or March, when a warm and light place near the glass is prefer- 

 able to any other. Mahernias are generally increased in sum- 

 mer by means of cuttings of soft-wooded lateral shoots, which 

 will strike in a cool propagating-bed in a temperature of about 

 sixty degrees. 



Kennedya (Maryattae) prostrata major.— Few twining green- 

 house plants can surpass this showy species, which flowers 

 very freely in March and April in a cool conservatory. It is 

 the only really valuable and floriferous greenhouse climber 

 among the Leguminosae, and it deserves wide and general 

 cultivation for its graceful habit and beautiful flowers. Like 

 all Kennedyas, it is a perennial herbaceous twiner, a native of 

 Australia, where the genus is indigenous. It differs from 

 K. prostrata in having lighter-colored and larger flowers, in 

 the more rounded and hairy leaflets, and in being profusely 

 floriferous. The trifoliate leaves are very handsome, with 

 roundish oblong wavy-edged leaflets about two inches long. 

 The slender stems often grow as long as twenty feet and carry 

 numerous axillary clusters of intensely deep scarlet flowers. 

 All the green parts of the plant, stems and branches, as well 

 as the foliage and stiples, are very hairy. All the Kennedyas 

 are readily propagated from seeds, which ripen in any mode- 

 rately warm and sunny position. They should be sown as 

 soon as ripe in a light compost, and may be grown out-of- 

 doors during the first season. They grow very rapidly and 

 require an abundant supply of water in summer, but may be 

 kept considerably drier in winter. They are best planted out 

 in prepared beds in sunny positions in the conservatory, where 

 they can be trained on pillars and rafters, producing the most 

 beautiful effect in spring and early summer. ., ^ „ 



Newark, N.J. N. J. Rose. 



where this is needed, but curvilinear symmetry and rectangu- 

 lar symmetry ought not to be mixed up in so small a place. 



Mrs. Van Rensselaer has noted one seiious mistake in the 

 new plan — that is, the sharp points in the grass-plats — and she 

 might have added that the few conifers introduced tend to 



Correspondence. 



The Plans of Madison Square. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — All persons interested in park-making will certainly be 

 grateful for the two plans of Madison Square in your last issue 

 and the study of their comparative merits by Mrs. Van Rens- 

 selaer. Perhaps still further discussion may be helpful, and I 

 therefore write to say that it is hardly correct to classify the 

 old plan as belonging to the naturalistic class. I draw a heavy 

 line (see fig. on this page) to show how symmetrical it is except 

 where it has been distorted in two or three places. Curved 

 lines are not necessarily natural. Of course, the building (C) 

 ought to be less conspicuous than it is, and the revised plan 

 corrects this. Plainly, too, the statues are introductions of a 

 later date, and the original designer is not responsible for 

 placing them where they are. They might be well removed 

 to the points (NN). If this were done I do not discover any 

 great superiority in the proposed plan over the old one. The 

 area is so small that the insertion of a bit of rectangular treat- 

 ment surrounded by a curvilinear treatment seems incon- 

 gruous. Nor is it large enough for a "variety of design, 

 abundance of shade, an effect of wide green lawns with seem- 

 ingly unstudied, yet artistic, arrangement of trees, shrubs and 

 grass, which produce pleasingly naturalistic impressions and 

 illusions." An attempt to accomplish all this in so contracted 

 a space must result in confusion. Let us have symmetry 



Fig. 22. — Plan of Madison Square, New York. 



spottiness. Again, instead of dividing the rectilinear garden 

 by a short straight avenue of trees running from circle to circle, 

 would it not be better to surround and frame in the flower 

 garden with them rather than bisect it? Perhaps trees are not 

 needed at all, for the flowers need all the sunshine they can 

 get. Mrs. Van Rensselaer is certainly right when she states 

 that parks in restricted areas had better be formalized. But 

 the central oval of the original plan might be adorned with 

 flowers as advantageously as the central feature of the pro- 

 posed plan, and the trees about this oval might be placed 

 symmetrically and at even distances if it was thought proper 

 to emphasize the symmetry of the centre of the place ; and 

 this would be advisable if the monuments were placed at the 

 points (NN). Undoubtedly the trees in the old plan should be 

 better grouped, or set in some symmetrical relation, and some 

 symmetrical shrub arrangement is needed especially outside 

 the central oval. With proper grouping of the trees symmetric 

 places might be found for formal flower-beds and balanced sites 

 tor statues. Altogether, if there could be some rearrangement 

 in the planting to make the symmetry of the present plan more 

 evident, it strikes me as better than the new ones. 



I should be greatly pleased to hear some other opinions on 

 these points, and trust that some artist will furnish you with 

 other plans designed without any regard to the square as it 

 now exists. Messrs. Bell & Langton have been hampered by 

 their efforts to save standing trees, so that they were allowed 

 very little freedom of treatment, and it is not fair to criticise 

 their plan as an original work. 



New York City. &• A. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I observe that in both plans of Madison Square, pub- 

 lished in your issue for April 8th, the paths which converge at 



