June 12, 1889.] 



Garden and Forest. 



277 



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, JUNE 12, 1889. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles : — Specialized Gardening;. — Popular Knowledge of Trees. . 277 



A New Eng;land Village Street (with illustration) 278 



Horticulture in Ancient Egypt 278 



'* California Lilacs " C. L. Anderson, M.D, 279 



New or Little Known Plants ; — Rudbeckia laciniata (with figure) 279 



Cultural Department : — Bagging Grapes E. Williains. 279 



Summer-Flowering Bulbs C. L, Alien. 280 



Notes on Wild Flowers F. H. Horsford. 280 



Orchid Notes F. Goldring. 282 



Astragalus hypoglottis. — Ranunculus speclosus. — Saxifraga granulata, 



E. O. Orpet. 282 

 Long White French Turnips.— A Hint about PicUles. — Celery Plants, 



\V. F. Massey. 282 



The Climbing Hydrangea Joseph Meehan. 283 



Notes from the Arnold Arboretum J. 284 



The Forest : — Succession of Forest Growths. Robert Douglas. 285 



Correspondence ; — Ulmus fulva pendula Thovias Meehan. 286 



Primula obconica John N. Gerard. 286 



Kissena Nurseries 5. 286 



Recent Plant Portraits 287 



Notes 288 



Illustrations : — Rudbeckia laciniata. Fig. 113 281 



Main Street, Charlestown, New Hampshire 283 



Specialized Gardening. 



A READER of this paper asks us to describe a spring- 

 garden made a few years ago in the neighborhood 

 of Boston, by a lady of taste, which has attained already 

 to some local celebrity, and received last year a special 

 prize from the Garden Committee of the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society. It occupies the site of an old-fash- 

 ioned fonnal garden, in a sort of amphitheatre, of a third 

 of an acre, perhaps, in extent, formed by deciduous trees 

 of fair size, in front of which were a few fine old shrubs, 

 relicts of the past. The ground slopes gradually to the 

 south and west, the centre of this slope being- occupied by 

 two noble Hemlocks, with wide branches sweeping on the 

 turf. The problem to be solved was how to make this 

 piece of ground most attractive during the months of May 

 and June, the only part of the year when the place is occu- 

 pied. The walks, of which there were a number, and all 

 the flower-beds occupying the space surrounding the two 

 Hemlocks, were first removed, and then a broad border 

 was made continuously round the amphitheatre, except at 

 three points, where entrances from the outside were left. 

 This border was planted with shrubs, the general effect 

 then being that of a small lawn of generally circular out- 

 line surrounding the two Hemlocks and in turn surrounded 

 by a border of shrubbery backed with larger trees. No 

 treatment could be more simple, and there is no description 

 of garden which can be more easily made. The success 

 of such a garden depends on proper natural surround- 

 ings, a fitting selection of plants for the borders, and the 

 adoption of graceful and natui'al curves for the line divid- 

 ing the turf froin the plantations. The selection of plants, 

 in themselves suited for such a garden and harmonious 

 each with his neighbor, is a matter demanding taste and 

 some technical knowledge ; and the introduction of a sin- 

 gle inharmonious element might easily destroy even an 

 exceptionally good site like the one we have briefly de- 

 scribed. The problem of selection has, however, in this 

 particular case been greatly simplified by the fact that this 

 garden was to be used during two months only ; such 

 plants as do not flower during these months could there- 



fore be discarded. Generally speaking, tall shrubs, such 

 as Lilacs, dwarf Apples, and various Plums occupy the 

 back of the border ; before these Spiraeas, Exochordas, Caly- 

 canthus, Forsythias, Tartarean Honeysuckles, and others 

 which may be expected under favorable conditions to at- 

 tain a height of six or eight feet, are grouped as naturally 

 as possible, vi^hile the margin of the bed, for a space of 

 three or four feet wide, is occupied with isolated masses of 

 Daphnes, Andromedas, small Azaleas, and other dwarf 

 spring-flowering shrubs, the spaces between these masses 

 being planted -with such hardy bulbous and other perennial 

 plants as bloom with them. This low growing margin is 

 broken occasionally by a plant of Spiraa Van Houttei or of 

 6". Thu7ibergii \i\2i\\\Q^ close to the turf, to send its branches 

 out over the green, and so to remove all idea of stiffness 

 or formality. 



This garden is in itself a beautiful creation, and a good 

 deal can be learned in it, of how to associate, and of how not 

 to associate, plants when natural and pleasing effects are 

 sought. It is surprising, for example, how entirely out of 

 place a mass of high-colored garden Tulips or of double 

 Hyacinths appear near the margin, and how admirably sin- 

 gle Narcissi and Scillas look when used in a similar situation. 

 All herbaceous plants, in fact, greatly altered by long cul- 

 tivation, appear here inharmonious, while Violets, hardy 

 Lady Slippers, Trilliums, Bloodroot and other inhabitants 

 of tire woods, produce the best possible effect. There is 

 a danger always in such a garden of over-doing and of 

 crowding in too many plants, either from the desire of pos- 

 sessing a great number of varieties or of producing imme- 

 diate effects. Close-planting in the beginning is well 

 enough, but unless some plants are removed as fast as they 

 begin to encroach on their neighbors the whole feeling of 

 the scheme will be destroyed, for certainly there is no 

 more melancholy spectacle than a mass of shrubs so 

 crowded together that they can grow only upwards, with- 

 out lateral branches and without foliage and flowers, 

 except at the very summit of the stems. A deciduous 

 shrub is only really handsome when it has play for full 

 and free development, and in the garden in question the 

 neglect of timely thinning has already left its mark. 



But it is time that we should leave this delightful spot, and 

 turn to the general conclusion to -which it naturally leads. 

 It is that specialized gardening, that is, the concentration 

 of effort in one direction must produce the most sat- 

 isfactory results, and that it is, therefore, the wise and 

 proper method to adopt. This is particularly true in 

 America to-day. A large proportion of our best gardening 

 is in connection with suburban homes ; and every year the 

 custom of leaving these homes about the ist of July for a 

 three months' vacation at the sea-shore or in the moun- 

 tains, prevails more and more in this country. Anything 

 like out-door winter-gardening in the Northern States is a 

 delusion. The climate fron-i December till April makes it 

 impossible ; so that when a man leaves his home early in 

 July, and does not return to it until after frost has nipped 

 vegetation, he can obtain the greatest amount of pleasure 

 by growing only such plants as are at their greatest beauty 

 between the ist of April and the ist of July. But specialism 

 in gardening can, of course, be carried much further, and 

 the further it is carried the greater may be the pleasure to 

 be derived from it. Suppose, for example, that instead of 

 a garden of mixed plants selected because the)^ flower 

 during May and June, a number of such gardens, each of 

 which might have been much smaller, had been planted, 

 one with Chinese Magnolias, another with dwarf Apples, 

 another with Lilacs (and no one who does not know the 

 varieties of these plants produced in recent years, can have 

 any idea of the beauty of Lilacs), another with hardy Aza- 

 leas, another with Rhododendrons, and so on through 

 a dozen other genera of plants, each of the series being ar- 

 ranged with perennial plants to flower simultaneously with 

 its special tree or shrub. Each of these gardens would be 

 perfect duriiig a single week, perhaps, only, but it is 

 easy to comprehend how the pleasure which could be ob- 



