576 



Garden and Forest. 



[November 27, 1889. 



The handsome new Brazilian Cucuihitaceous plant recently 

 described by M. Naudin, inider the name of Sicana odorifera, 

 has this year set fruits for the first time in Europe in the 

 gardens of the Villa Thuret, where it is expected that they will 

 ripen and perfect seed. 



Upon a few small plants of Syringa oblata which have come 

 under our notice near this city the leaves still remain fresh and 

 green. There is no mildew, nor is there any sign of turning 

 to bright autumn colors, which is said to distinguish this Lilac 

 from others. From other species and varieties near these 

 plants the leaves fell weeks ago. 



Among the Chrysanthemums which competed with Ada 

 Spaulding for the cup offered by Mrs. Harrison, Mistletoe, 

 raised by Mr. Frederick Dorner, is said by The American Florist 

 to be remarkable for a shade not before seen in Chrysanthe- 

 mums. This is described as a deep wine color on the upper 

 side of the florets, with a showy mauve reverse. The flower is 

 incurved. 



According to the Pacific Rural Press, the Sugar Pine-region 

 on the Georgetown divide has been fired in twenty places by 

 the sheep-herders to improve the pasture next year. The 

 mountaineers complain bitterly of the herders, who have de- 

 stroyed, as is asserted, hundreds of acres of the finest timber. 

 It is claimed that nearly all the destructive forest fires in that 

 vicinity of late have been deliberately kindled by the sheep 

 men. 



At the close of the Philadelphia Chrysanthemum Exhibition 

 a committee was appointed for the selection of the finest plant 

 in the hall, to be presented to Mrs. Elizabeth Schaffer, the lady 

 who presented the valuable hall building to the Philadelphia 

 Horticultural Society. The plant selected was one of the two 

 specimens of Mrs. A. Blanc, both prize winners, exhibited 

 by Mr. James Verner, gardener to Mr. A. J. Drexel, who kindly 

 consented to the presentation. This variety was sent out last 

 year by Messrs. Craig & Bro., of Philadelphia. 



Professor Bailey, in a recent Bullefin on Tomatoes, from the 

 Cornell Experiment Station, says that out of 200 varieties 

 tested, six could be selected which would combi;ie the desira- 

 ble market qualities of the entire list. These would be Igno- 

 tum. Beauty (or Acme), Mikado, Perfection, Favorite, and 

 Potato Leaf ; for very early, perhaps Advance, or Salzer, or 

 Prelude might be added. Of recent varieties especially valu- 

 able for amateur cultivation, Dwarf Champion, Lorillard, 

 Peach and Prelude are mentioned. Good varieties seem to 

 run out in about ten years. It is impossible now to get a sam- 

 ple of the Tilden Tomato, once very popular. Trophy is 

 becoming inferior, and Paragon begins to show the same 

 weakness. Frequent transplanting of the young plant and 

 good tillage are essential. Liberal manuring, too, is good 

 practice, although there is a prevailing notion that strong feed- 

 ing encourages an unprofitable growth of the plant at the 

 expense of the yield of fruit. 



The great horticultural exhibition to be held in Berlin next 

 spring will differ from its predecessors in the paramount 

 attention paid to the decorative side of the art — that is, to the 

 employment of plants and flowers in in-door decoration. Only 

 a small part of the exhibits will be shown out-of-doors, the 

 majority of them finding place in a large, permanent exhibi- 

 tion palace, to which green-houses are attached, and in a tem- 

 porary building to be erected near by. The decollation of ball- 

 rooms, living-rooms, banqueting tables, winter-gardens, etc., 

 will be displayed in appropriate apartments ; fountains of 

 various sorts will be shown amid varied groupings of plants ; 

 window and balcony gardening will be illustrated, and garden 

 sculpture shown ; one immense hall will give room for the 

 erection of arbors and pavilions ; decorations for christen- 

 ings, for weddings and for funerals will be displayed, and 

 all these branches will be open for competitive essays. Of 

 course, with all this, the usual features of a horticultural exhi- 

 bition will be found, and, moreover, a display of gardening 

 literature and landscape-gardening designs. According to the 

 full descriptions and the numerous plans published in a recent 

 number of Gartenfiora, this exhibition promises to be of sin- 

 gular interest. It is called a " General Exhibition," but whether 

 it is to be an international one or not we have not seen dis- 

 tinctly stated. 



Several large collections of trees and shrubs formed an 

 important and interesting feature in the permanent arrange- 

 ment of the gardens of the Trocadero at the Paris Exposition 

 during the past summer. The broad-leaved evergreens and 

 then the conifers were naturally the most conspicuous and 

 satisfactory features in these exhibits, because these plants 



recover from the effects of transplanting and push out new 

 growths sooner than plants with deciduous leaves, which often 

 do not get hold of the ground fairly for two or three years 

 after they have been transplanted. The number of new plants 

 in these collections, or even of very rare ones, was surpris- 

 ingly small ; and many species of North America, and of 

 eastern Asia, now comparatively well known in American 

 gardens, were entirely unrepresented at the Exposition ; 

 although nearly all such plants may be confidently expected to 

 flourish in central Europe. The naming of plants in these 

 collections was not, on the whole, satisfactory ; but certainly it 

 was not less so than the nomenclature in commercial estab- 

 lishments everywhere. The largest collections were those of 

 Croux & Fils, of Val d'Aulnay, near Sceaux, and of Honore 

 Defresne, of Vitry. In both collections there were fine series 

 of specimen plants of our evergreen Magnolia {^M. grandiflora) 

 — deservedly one of the popular trees in western and southern 

 France, and for many years a specialty in several of the great 

 French nurseries — of Ivies, and of standard, and half speci- 

 men of Rhododendrons in many varieties. In the Croux col- 

 lection were gathered together from the gardens of southern 

 Europe many evergreens, rarely seen at the north. These 

 added interest to the collection, of course, although hardly to 

 be placed among so-called hardy plants. M. Croux showed 

 three conifers which were described as "new." These were 

 a White Pine {P. Strobus), with leaves faintly marked with 

 transverse bands of yellow ; a dwarf variety of the Norway 

 Spruce [Picea excelsa), with a globular head, out of which a 

 few straggling branches grow up irregularly ; and a dwarf, 

 compact growing form of the Scotch Pine, called P. sylvestris 

 cohininaris compacta. This is a feathery and a rather striking 

 looking plant, which, until closely examined, would hardly be 

 taken for any form of Scotch Pine ; it was the only one of the 

 three plants of any real value ; and perhaps th© most interest- j 

 ing novelty in its class shown at the Exposition. v 



On the 29th of September last the centennial of the birth of 

 Peter Joseph Lenne was celebrated by a gathering of German 

 landscape-gardeners at the village of Bornstedt, near Potsdam, 

 where he lies buried. Holding for many years the position of 

 Director of the Royal Gardens in Prussia, Lenne is considered, 

 by his fellow-countrymen at least, the greatest landscape-gar- 

 dener of his time. The son of a court-gardener at Bonn, he 

 studied first at home and then in Paris, and later traveled 

 widely in Europe, being greatly influenced, as he confessed, 

 by the example of Kent. Thoroughly versed in horticul- 

 ture, architecture and engineering, as well as in the prin- 

 ciples of landscape-design, he was charged, while still a 

 young man, with numerous tasks in Potsdam and its vicinity, 

 building the so-called " Russian Village" at Potsdam, and re- 

 storing the royal gardens, which had suffered from grievous 

 neglect during the long wars with Napoleon. Frederick the 

 Great's gardens at Sans Souci were remodeled, and, we must 

 believe, greatly improved by his hand, and the work was very 

 quickly done, for he had previously established government 

 nurseries, whence he could draw an abundance of material, 

 and preparatory schools, which supplied him with efficient 

 assistants. In 1832, he transformed the Thiergarten, in Berlin, 

 originally a royal hunting-park, into a public garden, which, 

 improved by his successors, is now one of the most beauti- 

 ful in Europe. It was an idea of Lenne's that it should be 

 ornamented with memorials of national significance. In 1845 

 he laid out another park, the Friedrichshain, in Berlin, and 

 transformed many squares within the city into blooming gar- 

 dens. In 1848 he turned a flat kitchen garden at Potsdam into 

 the Marly Park, which has been called " an ideal work in the 

 English style," and later designed the "Sicilian" and " North- 

 ern "gardens, with their contrasting forms of vegetation. These 

 are but a few of Lenne's chief undertakings. In speaking of 

 their number and variety a recent writer in Gartenfiora says : 

 " In all his works, which were conceived on broad, vigorous 

 lines and with a masterly power of in-grouping, he took cre- 

 ative Nature as his guide and developed thereby his own cre- 

 ations in a personal style which found many followers." But 

 any one who remembers the stately terraces and plant-houses 

 at Sans Souci, for example, or the effect of the great central 

 avenue in the Thiergarten, will recognize that his following of 

 Nature did not mean servile imitation, but that he knew what » 

 differences of treatment were required in different situations, 

 and could work well in a semi-formal as well as in a thor- 

 oughly natural way. He died in 1866, and is commemorated 

 by a bust of Ranch's in the garden of the new palace in Pots- 

 dam, by a portrait in the Town Hall of Berlin, and by a street 

 in Berlin and one in Dresden, which have been called by his 

 name. Magnolia Lenne, the handsomest of the hybrid Mag- 

 nolias, recalls his name to all lovers of trees. 



