226 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number '220. 



(Ulex Europaeus) and Broom (Cytisus scoparius) suffered in 

 spite of heavy covering. Neither of them is reliably hardy in 

 this latitude and climate, although they thrive in the extreme 

 south-eastern part of Massachusetts. 



The Heaths, too (Erica and Calluna), do not always come 

 through the winters unscathed, and even when afforded some 

 covering a portion of the branches of Calluna vulgaris will 

 sometimes turn brown. This observation is made of plants 

 in cultivation ; perhaps in thoroughly congenial situations of 

 soil and moisture they would make a better showing. But 

 even with a partial loss of stems, enough usually remains to 

 produce a good show of flowers to encourage the cultivator. 



Arnold Arboretum . J- G, Jack. 



Correspondence. 

 Spring in Boston — A Foreigner's Impressions. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Spring came with a burst to Boston this year, as it has 

 done a good many years, I fancy, only I have not been there 

 to notice it. It was all new to me, and the perpetual changes 

 in the weather were in themselves a never-failing source of 

 interest. Watching these changes and wondering what might 

 come next was like studying the moods of a wayward and de- 

 lightful woman, whose occasional sullenness was more than 

 compensated for by the brilliancy of her smiles, when that 

 humor seized her, or by her impulses of stimulating breezi- 

 ness. I kept a weather-journal for a while, but it took 

 too much time even if I had been able to remember all the 

 changes that took place when I was away from my note-book 

 for a few hours. All of a sudden, just as I was beginning to 

 tire of my charmer, the sovereign change came ; spring was 

 here and obliterated the very memory of all that had gone be- 

 fore. Spring came, with warm soft breezes that irresistibly 

 suggested visions of southern climes, and yet helped the sun- 

 shine to till the heart with contentment. Spring came, and 

 with it the joy of the first sparkle of living green on the lawns 

 of the Public Garden, the first Crocuses in sheltered places 

 along Beacon Street. Now the whole procession of spring 

 flowers would be coming to light up the town gardens after 

 the long gloom of winter. 



Spring in town has a beauty of its own. It may not be com- 

 parable with that of spring in the country, for all the costly 

 bulbs that ever came from Holland cannot produce flowers 

 which give the pure joy of the sweet English Violets, or the 

 small star-like Anemones that spread a delicate purplish blue 

 carpet over sunny slopes in our Swedish woods, or of the 

 gorgeous Italian Anemones, handsome, frank and pure as a 

 Tuscan mountain-girl. But spring in town has a beauty of its 

 own akin to the bright beauty of tlie treeless south, and duly 

 felt by the Neapolitans, among whom some of the lost Italian 

 color-sense still lingers when they deck their fruit-stalls and 

 fish-venders' carts with flowers in the bright colors and har- 

 monious combinations that the glorious sunshine calls for. 

 The call is almost as strong here in New England, and just as 

 strong out of town as in it — witness the intense green of the 

 Flags and the joyous note of accordance with Nature that they 

 strike. Only in the country there are also the woods, with their 

 broken interlaced shadows and drifted heaps of fawn-colored 

 leaves, their expectant quietness and cold suggestive corners. 

 In town we have nothing but unmitigated sunlight, intensified 

 by reflection from long lines of brick walls, sharply defined 

 house-shadow, spring dresses, bright sunshades, gay colors in 

 shop-windows, and glittering expanses of emerald grass in 

 plots and squares and public gardens. I do not say that there 

 is not room for the still small voice of Violets and shady cool 

 corners in town, too ; but on the whole I think the special 

 spring beauty of town gardens, as of fields, is mainly to be 

 sought in brilliancy. Fortunately, Nature has provided for 

 this, and given the artist-gardener a working palette of the 

 most splendid colors — colors which in summer would per- 

 haps seem garish to some tastes, but which in spring, after the 

 long starvation of the winter, only seem to satisfy a natural 

 craving of the eye, and afford invaluable opportunities for the 

 education of the color-sense. Everything is educational now- 

 adays, and such public functionaries as curators of museums 

 and superintendents of public gardens are not always to be en- 

 vied. While the democratic principle demands that they 

 should make their collections or gardens useful for practical 

 study by the people who pay for them, socialistic thought has 

 progressed far enough to demand that they should feel their 

 responsibility as educators of the masses. Now, if there is 

 anything that needs re-educating up to a lost standard, it is the 

 color-sense in the great mass of people to-day, and the spring 



flowers ofter splendid opportunities in this respect, both for 

 strong masses and bands and splashes of pure color, repre- 

 sented by the Tulips, and for soft and delicate harmonies of 

 tint and tone, furnished by the Hyacinths, so like soft uncut 

 velvet in their first fresh texture. I have often thought that it 

 would be well to let a French milliner with real taste be con- 

 sulted about the arrangement of flower-beds, especially of 

 Hyacinth-beds. Would that the Boston public gardener had 

 called in a certain French milliner in Boylston Street for advice 

 as to color-combinations ! And why not ? What is good in a 

 bonnet is good in a flower-bed, and a flower-bed is a vastly 

 more important thing than a bonnet. 



My ardor of hope was a little damped when I saw that the 

 Crocuses had been put into the lawns at regular intervals, 

 making tedious diagonal and cross lines over the grass like the 

 designs of certain wall-papers. Well, that was a mistake per- 

 haps. I still ventured to hope for great things from the Tulips 

 and Hyacinths, and made a special pilgrimage into town (I 

 was in the country by that time) to see them. 



Boston readers will appreciate my disappointment at the 

 sight I saw. For readers out of Boston I will add that the bulbs 

 seemed put in the ground haphazard, and that the only care 

 exercised had been to get in as many as possible. As to color- 

 schemes, harmonies, combinations, they were non-existent, 

 or, at least, incomprehensible. No wonder that the ladies pre- 

 fer to go to Madame O.'s plate-glass windows for their color- 

 istic education. There was nothing educational in the bulb- 

 beds of the Public Garden. They showed a jumble so charac- 

 terless, so confused, that I could not even stop to notice the 

 infelicitous combinations, as a warning against ever trying 

 them again. I simply hurried on in sorrow, and now can only 

 remember a profusion of pale mauve Hyacinths just where 

 they ought not to be, dominating the patternless mosaic of 

 other tints in a way that made them seem almost vulgar. 



After my first impressions were in type I went into town for 

 a second look, so that I might see the full glory of the Tulips. 

 The Tulips were better, and some of the combinations were 

 excellent, such as a blaze of red set off by a band of white or a 

 field of pink, framed in a deeper rose. Some little arrange- 

 ments were almost as attractive as if the French milliner's 

 dainty taste had been consulted, as, for example, little round 

 plots of golden white Tulips set on dark Pansies. But there 

 were exceptions. The artist, as a rule, seems to have been 

 controlled by the notion that a mass of Tulips in one tint or 

 shade, set off by a border of Tulips in another and planted in a 

 thick bed of Pansies of any color, could not help being beau- 

 tiful. In some cases the result was happy, although even the 

 little plot of white TuHps and Pansies I have mentioned would 

 have been more effective if the Pansies had been allowed to 

 broaden out into a border, so as to make a setting of a deep 

 velvety tone around the bright centre of the Tulips. In other 

 cases the result was painful — a combination of two discordant 

 reds, for instance, or a good Tulip scheme in rose spoiled by 

 the introduction of a bed of washed-out violet Pansies creep- 

 ing between the stems. 



The effect of the whole, too, was disturbing. I do not feel 

 at all certain that the laying out of the beds is the best possible 

 one. But given this arrangement of large flat beds, so near 

 each other as if they belonged together, of course they ought 

 to have been treated accordingly, and one combination ought 

 to have led up to, or set off, the next one, and in the arrange- 

 ment of the whole, which is taken in at one glance of the eye, 

 a clear, well-thought out scheme of harmony ought to have 

 made itself felt. Here was aft opportunity for showing that 

 the gardener is, after all, an artist of higher rank than the mil- 

 liner. The Lord of Misrule had it all his own way, while the 

 prominent note, badly introduced, was the fashionable shade 

 of deep solferino, which requires very careful treatment to be 

 used at all. 



Milton, Mass. C. Waem. 



Bird's-foot Violets in Cultivation. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — The communicafion ffom your Missouri contributor, 

 entitled " Wild Flowers in Cultivation," in Garden and Forest 

 for April 6th, suggests an experience of my own in the culti- 

 vation of Viola pedata bicolor which may have interest for 

 others. 



In the early spring of 1887 I drove from Washington with a 

 friend to Arlington Heights. The road-side, as we ascended 

 from the river-bank, was decked with early flowers, and as we 

 came to the foot of a long hill, up which we were to climb, 

 the entire slope, from top to bottom, was aglow with the va- 



