March 23, 1892.] 



Garden and Forest. 



143 



through books which are inaccessible to the general reader. 

 The illustrations add greatly to the value of the text, although 

 they do not always prove its assertions. They seem to show 

 that English gardens, before French influence had extended 

 them into parks and planted them with dense groves and 

 mighty avenues of long extent, must have been pretty spots to 

 look at, excellent spots in which to grow ]iretty flowers, and 

 good accompaniments for architectural eflect to the houses 

 which face upon them ; but that the excellence in design, of 

 which we read so much, was of a very rudimentary and naive 

 sort except as regarded absolutely architectural features. Ter- 

 races and wtills appear to have been well imagined and con- 

 structed, but nothing tliat can be called an architectural treat- 

 ment of trees and of large areas of water and grass appears to 

 have been attempted until the advent of French fashions. The 

 garden areas themselves were small, and their design con- 

 sisted simply in tlie perpetual repetition of the simplest geo- 

 metrical figures. They were undoubtedly good gardens, and 

 gardens of the sort which were most appropriate to houses of 

 the usual English kinds. But they were not great works of art 

 like the gardens of Le Notre and his immediate followers. Mr. 

 Blomfield's chapters are a little confused in arrangement, and 

 it is not always easy to put the rightdateupon the things which 

 he describes; but the general impression left by his book is 

 tliat the advent of French influence first developed garden de- 

 sign in England into an important art. Best of all are the chap- 

 ters which discuss in succession the different features of old 

 gardens, and here we often come upon very good bits of ad- 

 vice. For example, the author wisely counsels the use of 

 stone or leaden statues and ornaments instead of white marble 

 ones, which are too glaring for the English climate, and bronze 

 ones, which are too sumptuous in effect except amid very 

 splendid surroundings. He is right, too, when he says that 

 clipped shrubs and trees are not more unnatural than many 

 other things which we admit into our natural gardens, although 

 he exaggerates in saying that they are as natural as clipped 

 grass. The ordinary processes of husbandry and pasturag-e 

 have accustomed our eyes to surfaces where the grass is 

 cropped short, but not to trees cut into stiffly symmetrical 

 forms. Such trees may have their place in art, however, and 

 we only wish that Mr. Blomfield had defined this place more 

 intelligently for the instruction of those who deny that it exists. 

 We wish also that, while protesting against that degeneracy in 

 topiary work which followed the introduction of Dutch gar- 

 dening fasliions, he had not himself chosen to admire one very 

 Dutch example of which he gives an illustration. Trees and 

 shrubs may be clipped upon occasion, but never into the like- 

 ness of a wall upon which are perched two colossal doves. 

 Nor will all the architectural and sculptural features of old 

 gardens which the illustrations reproduce ever gratify a taste 

 that cares for purity in outlines and for vigor combined with 

 delicacy in the treatment of details. 



In speaking of grass-theatres Mr. Blomfield cites no existing 

 example, but says that " in the gardens of the Prince Bishops, 

 of Wurzburg, there was a famous amphitheatre formed of 

 banks of turf with clipped hedges for scenery." He may be 

 interested to learn that in the Grosser Garten, at Dresden, once 

 a royal but now a public park, such a theatre still exists in 

 good preservation. It lies between two of the main avenues, 

 hidden from sight by thick masses of trees, and is approached 

 by a narrow path. This path cuts it through the centre, the 

 ranges of turf-seats rising on one hand and the turfed stage on 

 the other, surrounded by masses of foliage, which were prob- 

 ably once more closely trimmed than they are to-day, and 

 ornamented with moss-grown statues of gray stone — Rococo 

 works, which are pretty bad from the sculptural, but very 

 effective from the decorative point of view. 



Che7iiicals and Clover. This is a little pamphlet by H. W. 

 Collingwood, one of the editors of the Rtiral New Yorker, and 

 the part of it which has real value is that which records the 

 success of certain New Jersey farmers who practice the follow- 

 ing four-year rotation of crops : Potatoes are planted on ground 

 where Corn has been grown the year before, with a thousand 

 pounds of some so-called complete fertilizer to the acre sown 

 broadcast before planting and five hundred or more pounds later 

 in the drill. In the fall the Potato-ground is plowed and seeded 

 withWheatand Timothy, and Clover is sown in the spring. The 

 next year the hay is gathered, and in the third year of the rota- 

 tion, after the hay is cut, all the stable-manure made on the 

 farm is hauled out and spread on the sod, and the aftermath 

 is allowed to decay on the ground. Next spring the land is 

 plowed and the ground planted to Corn, whicli finds abundant 

 nourishment in the decaying sod. The principle of this sys- 



tem is that the heavy dressing of chemicals on the Potatoes not 

 only yields a profitable crop, but leaves the soil sufficientlyfer- 

 tile to give a crop of Wheat and Grass. The stable-manure 

 helps to make a heavy sod, and the Corn is able to appropriate 

 the coarser part of the food by its strong digestion. As little 

 stock is kept as possible outside of the working teams, and no 

 particular pains is taken to increase the amount of stable-ma- 

 nure. We apprehend, however, that there is little danger of 

 having too much of this on the sod; and the stable-manure 

 does not deserve the depreciating tone in which it is alluded to. 

 It is quite true that in many cases it is cheaper to purchase 

 and apply a given amount of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and 

 potasli in commercial fertilizers than it is in stable-manure, 

 and in some cases the same amount of these in chemical fer- 

 tilizers will show quite as good results as it would in well- 

 rotted stable-manure. In otlier cases in our own experience 

 plant-food in chemicals has not been relished by crops as well 

 as the same food in well-decayed and well-fined stable-manure. 

 It may be that, apart from the plant-food in stable-manure, it 

 furnishes a nidus wherein are multiplied those microscopic or- 

 ganisms which science has found to play so important a part 

 in the growth of plants. Some old market-gardeners on Lon"- 

 Island will not haul stable-manure from the station to the 

 farm if it were given to them. They say it is cheaper to buy 

 chemicals and to apply them alone than it is to transport and 

 apply the bulkier material. But, then, in these old gardens 

 tons of manure have been used on every acre annually for a 

 generation, until the ground is filled with carbonaceous mat- 

 ter left by old applications from the stable, so that the nitric 

 ferment and other bacteria which are helpful to plant o-rowth 

 may already occupy the ground in sufficient numbers. This, 

 however, is only a surmise, but the fact remains that our knowl- 

 edge of the processes by which plants avail themselves of the 

 materials for their development which are found in air and 

 water is very limited. There is no doubt that so-called arfifi- 

 cial fertilizers are destined to a wider use in the future as we 

 learn how to use them to better advantage, and the accurate 

 records of any experiments with them are always worth pre- 

 serving. 



Notes. 



In Mr. Blomfield's Formal Gardening in England he tells us 

 that during the War of Independence many of the leaden 

 figures which ornamented old English gardens were exported 

 to this country, nominally as works of art, but really to be 

 melted down and cast into bullets. 



In EUwanger & Barry's general catalogue, in addition to the 

 classified list of Roses, where the different families are sepa- 

 rated with unusual care, there is a valuable alphabetical list 

 including about 350 of the leading sorts in cultivation, in which 

 the class to which each individual belongs is indicated by 

 abbreviations. 



Last week Mr. Gerard sent to this ofBce flowers of Iris 

 Bakeriana and of I. histrioides which had been snowed under 

 twice. In spite of the severe weather, they looked perfectly 

 fresh and bright, and exhaled a distinct Violet odor. These 

 early Irises are among the most attractive of the flowers which 

 brave the frosts of March. 



A Philadelphia correspondent of the American Florist says 

 that Mr. C. D. Ball has remarkable success with Lilium longi- 

 florum, which he grows in quantity for Easter decoration in- 

 stead of L. Harrisii. The flower of the former has more body, 

 so that it will endure longer, especially if it is warm, as it often 

 is at Easter-time, while the erect habit of the flowers makes 

 them easier to ship. Most persons consider it more graceful 

 than the Bermuda Lily. 



So careful are the Japanese in their study of what is appro- 

 priate and inappropriate in the arrangement of flowers, that 

 they would not use even a small metal stem-fastener without 

 considering the character of its design. A fastener in the shape 

 of a frog, for instance, may be used with both land and water 

 plants, but one in the shape of a hare, especially suitable for 

 use with wild plants and grasses, would never be affixed to 

 water plants, and one in the shape of a pair of carps is reserved 

 for water plants alone. 



The exhibition of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society next 

 week promises to be one of exceptional interest. The large pri- 

 vate collections in Philadelphia and its neighborhood are 

 always represented by choice plants, and the local commercial 

 growers have an enterprise and public spirit which is seen 

 at its best at these exhibifions. Mr. Blanc will make such a 



