May 1 6, 



Garden and Forest. 



133 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY liV 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office; Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted bv Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, MAY 16, iS 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



rAGF. 

 Editorial Articles : — The Improvement of School Grounds. — Villas and their 



Doorways. — The Attack on City Hall Park. — Notes 133 



Tubercles on Leguminous Roots Professor W G. Farlo^v. 135 



Obituary, Dr. Pancic Dr. C. Bolle. 135 



A Well-arran,e;ed Flower Border (with illustration) 136 



E.\tract from Letter to Beaumont W. Wordswarik. 136 



Foreign Correspondence: — The Kew Arboretum. IV George Nicholson. 136 



London Letter WUliaiti Goldrijig. 138 



New or Little Known Plants : — Hymenocallis Palmeri (with illustration), 



Sereno If''atson. 138 



Plant Notes; — Rocky Mountain Cypripediums Sere?to Watson. 13S 



Merendera Caucasica, var. Kuthenica — A Hybrid Poplar, Populus Stein- 

 iana 1 3S 



Cultural Department: — Tlie Gladiolus C. L. Allen. 139 



Picea Ajanensis, Fischer — Psychotria jasminiflora — Rhododendron Dau- 

 rium sempervireus — Tulipa Kesselnngii — Primula rosea — Primula 

 cortusoides — The Bloodroot — Streptosolen Jamesoni — Aciuile^ia lon- 



gissima — Parry's Lily — Narcissus in Water 140 



The Forest : — The Forest Vegetation of North Mexico. IV. (with illustration), 



C. G. Pr ingle. 141 



Correspondence 14:? 



Recent Publications 143 



Public Works 144 



Retail Flower Markets; — New York, Philadelphia, Boston 144 



Illustrations : — A Well-arranged Flower Border 137 



Hymenocallis Palmeri, Fig. 25 139 



Santa Ritas Foot-hills with Quercus oblongifolia 140 



The Improvement of School Grounds. 



THE ordinary surroundings of an American public 

 school-house are not attractive. Rarely are they 

 shaded or turfed; more rarely is any attempt made to make 

 the dusty ground of the traditional school-yard, or its 

 trampled and muddy surface, even neat and pleasant to the 

 eye. A good deal of money is generally e.xpended in sur- 

 rounding the school-lot with an imposing and generally hid- 

 eous and inappropriate fence, and then the external decora- 

 tion of the building is considered complete. 



The discussion which this condition of things has given 

 rise to in the columns of some of our contemporaries are 

 suggestive of what may be. accomplished in rural improve- 

 ments of this character, and should bring about a much 

 needed reform in the treatment of school-grounds throughout 

 the country. A series of illustrations, showing a number 

 of small country school-houses before and after the im- 

 provement of the grounds, which appeared in a recent 

 issue of Popular Gardening, should be in the hands ot 

 every country school-board and every country school- 

 teacher in the United States. Few people realize what 

 a change in the appearance of a building the expendi- 

 ture of a few dollars in planting trees and shrubs about 

 it, and in improving the lines of its approach, can make. 

 This these illustrations admirably show. Such simple 

 improvements can be made to exert something more 

 than an aesthetic and civilizing influence upon a body oi 

 school-children. They can be made to play a direct 

 and important part in their practical instruction. The 

 people of this country are singularly ignorant about trees, 

 their real characters, their mode and manner of growth, 

 their uses, and their names even. How many intelligent 

 and well-educated men or women are there in this 

 country who can distinguish the different Maples which 

 they see in their daily walks, or know by sight the dif- 

 ferent Hickories, or Oaks, or Pines? Many persons who 

 consider themselves accomplished botanists, know Ferns, 

 and even Grasses, perhaps, or Mosses, or some of the 



other lower plants, much better than they know the trees 

 which surround them. Appreciation comes with knowl- 

 edge, and until our people learn about our trees — their 

 value, their qualities and uses, the history of their lives, 

 their distribution and relationship to the trees of the rest 

 of the world — they will neither really appreciate nor value 

 them, or learn to care for and protect them. If there is 

 ever in the United States a stable, successful and popu- 

 lar system of forest control and forest management, ap- 

 plicable alike to the forests of the State and to the hum- 

 ble wood-lot of the smallest farmer, it will rest upon a 

 basis of knowledge of trees and their importance to the 

 community, commenced in tha primary schools. 



If our cities and villages are ever properly adorned 

 with well selected trees, well planted and well protected, 

 this will be brought about through an appreciation of 

 trees born of seed planted in country school-houses. 

 The smallest school-grounds in the humblest community 

 can be made to contribute to the knowledge and the 

 subsequent love of trees. There is no school-lot so 

 small that a place cannot be found in it for one or two 

 trees or shrubs; and with a little care and judgment in 

 selection, most country school-yards might contain rep- 

 resentatives of the important trees and shrubs, and some 

 of the lesser plants, peculiar to their immediate vicinity. 

 Native trees should be selected for this purpose, not only 

 because they are the best for the purpose, but because 

 a child should first learn about the trees which he meets 

 in his every-day life, and therefore most readily impressed 

 upon his memor)''. School-yard trees should be correctly 

 and conspicuously labeled with the English and the bo- 

 tanical names, in order that the name may become asso- 

 ciated with the tree in the child's mind; and every teacher 

 should be able to give some simple instruction, not only 

 in regard to the characters and uses of the trees which 

 surround the school-house, but of other trees as well. 



Lessons of this simple character — object lessons in 

 Nature — learned without an effort in early childhood, are 

 never forgotten, and, sooner or later, bear good fruit and 

 open the way to many delightful and lasting pleasures 

 which most Americans are now deprived of through lack 

 of proper early training. 



School grounds in cities and large towns where land is 

 expensive and the number of scholars large, are rarely 

 suitable for this purpose, but the parks and squares of 

 such cities, if properly used by teachers, can be made of 

 much greater educational value than they are at present. 

 Classes can always be taken into public grounds and 

 the nature of the trees and plants which they contain ex- 

 ])lained. 



That teachers and pupils alike may get the greatest 

 advantage from the opportunities which most of our 

 cities offer for object teaching of this nature, the trees and 

 other important plants in public grounds should be cor- 

 rectly and legibly named. The whole community, and 

 not the children and their teachers alone, derive a benefit 

 and much real pleasure from this practice. 



The trees on the Common and Public Garden in Boston 

 have been very generally and successfully labeled ; and 

 the same thing has been attempted on a smaller scale in 

 the Central Park in this city and in the Capitol grounds in 

 Washington. 



It might be extended with advantage to all the public 

 grounds in the country. 



Villas and Their D(3orways. 



WITEN the building of a detached suburban house is 

 contemplated — whether it be a simple cottage or 

 a more ambitious villa — the first point to be decided is, of 

 course, the position of the house as regards distance from 

 the street. Cases are rare in which the configuration of 

 the ground determines this question ; most often it depends 

 merely upon the size of the lot and the taste of the owner. 

 In former days the house was usually placed quite near the 



