May 7, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



221 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office : Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y. 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 1890. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles :— The Spring Garden.— The " Torrey -tree."— Sir Dietrich 



Brandis • 221 



Some Old American Country-Seats.— VI. Hyde Parle. (Illustrated.) 



Charles Eliot. 222 

 The Art of Gardening— An Historical Sketch.— XX. The Mahometans in 



Spain and India Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 223 



New or Little Known Plants :— Paulownia Fortunei 224 



Foreign Correspondence :— London Letter IV. Watson. 224 



Cultural Department :- Early-blooming Shrubs and Trees, 



Professor J. L. Budd. 225 



Notes After a Mild Winter J. G. Jack. 225 



A Few Greenhouse Plants W. 226 



Notes on American Plants F. H. Horsford. 227 



Hardy Plants for Cut Flowers.— Ill E. O. Orpet. 228 



Orchard Experiences.— IV T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 228 



Seasonable Hints P. O. Z29 



Magnolia Kobus.— Fothergilla alnifolia.— Corylopsis spicata, 



Joseph Meehan. 229 



Recent Publications : — Forestry in North America.— I Sir Dietrich Brandis. 229 



Correspondence :— Hardy Plants at Short Hills, N. J G. 230 



About Grafting S. B. Parsons. 231 



A Large Purple Beech L. W. Russell. 231 



Evergreens Destroyed by Fire Professor E. S. Goff. 231 



Notes z 3 1 



Illustrations :— Hyde Park : Entrance Front 226 



Hyde Park: River Front 227 



The Spring Garden. 



IN these early May days the spring garden at the north, if 

 it has been skillfully planned, is unfolding its choicest 

 treasures, and is yielding a pleasure more intense than any 

 which the wealth of flowers, the luxuriance of foliage or the 

 fragrance and beauty of ripened fruits will bring as the sea- 

 son grows older. No later flowers cause such genuine 

 delight as that with which we welcome the harbingers 

 of spring. This is not altogether on account of their 

 intrinsic beauty, although many of them are strangely 

 fair; nor is it yet because they have so few rivals and 

 occupy the field comparatively alone. Perhaps a stronger 

 reason for the appeal they make to the imagination is the 

 promise which they bring of a revival of life at hand — a 

 promise especially cheering after our long and dreary 

 northern winters. Besides this, there is a singular delicacy 

 and fragility about those which first venture out into 

 the wild weather, and this takes hold upon our sympa- 

 thies. But whatever may be the causes of this universal 

 manifestation, the fact remains that every one who has any 

 admiration for flowers, or appreciation of them, is especially 

 attracted by those which bloom out-of-doors in this early 

 season. Many of these, like the Snowdrops and Winter 

 Aconite, appeared before the grass began to show its first 

 tender green, and now, when the branches of many of the 

 trees are still bare, the spring garden is filled with flowers 

 of the most delicate texture and richest color. Mere lists 

 of plants are usually tedious, but a simple catalogue of 

 even the commoner ones that have already flowered has a 

 certain attractiveness. There is something akin to music 

 in the very names of Anemone, and Scilla,and Primula, 

 and Trillium, and Triteleia, and Uvularia, and Viola ; and 

 so there is in the common names like Snowflake, Wake- 

 Robin, Grape Hyacinth, Fritillary, Wind-flower, Twin- 

 leaf, Mitrewort and Violet. The variety of these flowers is 

 almost endless. Collectors have ransacked all the tem- 

 perate regions and high mountain ranges of the globe for 



hardy, early-blooming plants, so that there is no place so 

 pretentious that the spring garden cannot be made suffi- 

 ciently elaborate and expensive to correspond with its 

 other features, and there is no garden so modest that a 

 corner of it cannot, with trifling labor and expense, be be- 

 comingly brightened with early flowers as beautiful as 

 those borne by the most expensive rarities. 



Now there are many persons who feel with each return- 

 ing spring the charm which invests the flowering shrubs 

 and herbs of the season, but the time for arranging the 

 spring garden has then already passed, and later in the 

 year when the bulbs should be planted, the beauty of the 

 early flowers has faded from the memory and the matter is 

 postponed until another year is lost. Of course, the proper 

 time to begin garden work is now, in every instance. 

 Plans cannot be laid too early. If a rock-garden is to be 

 made — and many alpine plants will thrive better when 

 their slender roots can find coolness and moisture in the 

 deep pockets of well constructed rock-work than anywhere 

 else — it is none too early to begin. Such a place can only 

 be successful when the rocks are carefully placed, so as to 

 check the flow of surface-water and allow it to percolate 

 slowly into the soil between them. This soil must have 

 time to settle and become compact, for any air-spaces 

 mean dryness and death to root and plant. Another 

 effective arrangement for a spring garden is where a south- 

 ward sloping space of open greensward or a small lawn 

 containing a few specimen-trees is surrounded by a shrub- 

 border, and this border may again be surrounded by trees. 

 These shrubs should be, as a rule, early flowering, with 

 taller ones like certain of the Thorns, the Dwarf Apples and 

 Lilacs on the outside, with Exochordas, Spiraeas and Bush 

 Honeysuckles and others of this size in front of them, and 

 an irregular belt along the inner margin containing scat- 

 tered groups of Azaleas, Daphnes, Andromedas, hardy 

 Heaths and other low-growing shrubs. Between these 

 shrub-groups may be set hardy bulbous plants and other 

 perennials which bloom at the season. Such a garden can 

 be made singularly effective when the curves which unite the 

 turf with the border are gracefully laid, and when this mar- 

 gin is broken occasionally by some shrub like Van Houtte's 

 Spiraea, set close to the turf, to relieve all appearance 

 of formality by throwing its arched branches out upon the 

 grass. A garden of this kind has already been described 

 with some detail in this journal (see vol. ii., p. 277). 



But no one need be deterred from projecting a spring 

 garden because he can have no shrub-bordered lawn and 

 no costly rock-work. One of the most interesting collec- 

 tions of spring flowers with which we are acquainted is in 

 a city lot. It is interesting because its collector is a 

 specialist who takes pains to find the choice species of 

 Tulips, the most interesting forms of Snowdrops, Squills 

 and Daffodils, and other early flowers ; and because he 

 cares for his own garden and has become an expert and an 

 authority in spring flowering plants and their cultivation. 

 When one has scarcely a square rod of ground there is 

 room along the southern line of the house-foundation for 

 many an early flower which needs its protection, and it 

 must be a scanty lot indeed which will not furnish room 

 for some clumps of the Poet's Narcissus. Novices should re- 

 member that the plants which flower next spring will have 

 made every preparation to bloom the season before, and 

 therefore the sooner herbaceous plants are in their places 

 the better, while the bulbs will, as a rule, show r better 

 bloom if they are in the ground in early autumn. Those 

 who are not novices will need none of these reminders, 

 but to them we suggest the spring garden as a fascinating 

 field of special study ; and there need be no fear that this 

 field is too contracted for a serious student. It will furnish 

 ample scope for the most patient investigation. It is to the 

 men who devote themselves to a single family of plants 

 like the Primula or Narcissus to whom we look for instruc- 

 tion, and while they are adding to the sum total of horti- 

 cultural knowledge they will find in the study itself its own 

 ample and satisfying reward. 



