158 



Garden and Forest. 



[May 30, 1888. 



Balcon}? Flower Boxes. 



A LARGE number of the dwelling-houses in our smaller 

 towjis stand far enough apart from one another and 

 far enough back from the street to be encircled by small 

 lawns, by trees and shrubs and flowers. If their owners 

 do not always make the best possible use of the opportu- 

 nities thus afforded them, still there are few cases in which 

 some desire for beauty is not manifest ; and the general 

 aspect of streets composed of such houses is apt, at least, 

 to be verdant and cheerful. But in every town which de- 

 serves the name — which is too large to be called a village — 

 we find other streets where the houses stand so close to- 

 gether and so near the street, that, except as they may have 

 yards lying in the rear, no space for gardening remains. 

 The aspect of such streets as these is too commonly dreary 

 and dull in the extreme. The architectural interest, or, at 

 least, dignity, which the streets of a city may have is want- 

 ing ; and, although a row of Maples may shade the side- 

 walk, there is nothing to show that the householder has any 

 love for natural beauty or any wish to enliven the prospect 

 for himself and his neighbors. Yet this householder is 

 most often of the class which cannot seek beauty and re- 

 freshment by prolonged summer vacations in really rural 

 spots. Winter and summer his home must be here, and it 

 seems a double pity, therefore, that there should be so little 

 to mark to his eyes the difference between the seasons. 

 Surely something might be done to enliven such streets a 

 little, and to give their occupants a small taste of the 

 pleasure which their wealthier neighbors get from their 

 lawns and shrubberies and flower beds. 



The only available resource is the cultivation of plants in 

 boxes. But simple and humble though it sounds, it is a 

 resource in which lie possibilities of great improvement for 

 such streets as we have in mind, and of much enjoyment 

 for their dwellers. A few years ago a lady who had 

 lived long in Germany, where the growing of plants in 

 window-boxes is a widespread national custom, found her- 

 self established for the summer in the central house of a 

 row of small, ugly wooden houses in a little town near 

 New York. The front stoop descended to the sidewalk, 

 and lietween the parlor windows and the front railing 

 there was room for nothing more than a narrow balcony 

 and an exiguous strip of grass. But before the summer 

 was over this naked, unattractive house-front was blos- 

 soming like a bower. A few Roses had been planted 

 in the narrow strip of grass, a few creepers beside the 

 stoop ; from the roof of the porch hung a great basket of 

 trailing plants, and along the top of the balcony balustrade 

 ran wide boxes filled with veritable little thickets of foliage 

 and flowers. The cost had been almost nothing ; the labor 

 bestowed had been little indeed ; but the result was 

 charming, and the succeeding season bore good results. 

 Not only had many neighbors followed the example 

 thus set, but here and there all through the town 

 could be seen attempts at imitation. Balconies were en- 

 circled with flowery boxes, window-sills were filled with 

 them, and even the railings of long piazzas bore them too. 



Boxes suitable for such purposes can be made at the 

 most trifling expense of pine-wood, painted to correspond 

 with the house. If the support on which they stand is 

 narrow, additional syiace may be gained by flaring their 

 sides. Holes for drainage should be pierced in their sides 

 near the bottom, and they should have a layer of potsherds 

 or small stones beneath the rich garden-earth with which 

 they are filled. If the space exceeds five or six feet in 

 length, it is better to use a succession of boxes instead of 

 one long one, as then they may be more easily emptied 

 and removed at the coming of winter, to be kept in a dry 

 place until again required. Plant towards the front of 

 the box such trailers and creepers as will grow to five or 

 six feet, but not more, iu length — German Ivy, for exam- 

 ple, Tradescantia, Cypress-vine, and, among them plants 

 of Lobelia, Mahernia and the pretty little Convolvulus 

 which seedsmen call C. minor. And behind these, which 



after a very few weeks will form a deep curtain of waving 

 green across the front of the balcony, plant what you will 

 so long as it will not grow to too great a height nor form 

 too solid a mass of color. What you want is not a mass 

 of vivid Coleus nor of pink and red Geraniums, but a mass 

 of green, with here and there a Geranium or Verbena, or a 

 crimson Coleus and sparks and accents of all bright hues. 

 Not only are the effects thus produced more beautiful, but 

 the danger from thievish boys is less than when a mass 

 of easily picked large flowers attracts their fingers. 



Many of the most desirable plants for this purpose can 

 be grown from seed, and the others can be very cheaply 

 bought in pots. The care they require will not extend be- 

 yond a gradual thinning out as growth progresses, a little 

 attention to the direction of the trailing shoots, a constant 

 removal of faded flowers, and a daily watering — all of 

 which can be done at odd moments, and with none of the 

 fatigue that attends stooping over garden-beds. For this 

 last reason the cultivation of such tiny box-gardens should 

 be especially attractive to invalids and elderly persons, 

 while the beauty they maybe made to yield will be doubly 

 valued for being constantly under the eye of those whom 

 household cares keep much within walls. 



An appropriation for the establishment and mainten- 

 ance of a Forestry Station at Dodge City, on the Arkansas 

 River, in the extreme south-western part of Kansas, was 

 made by the last Legislature of that State. Mr. George V. 

 Bartlett, of Ohio, has been appointed director of the Sta- 

 tion. Fifty acres of ground, previously prepared by a 

 seasons cultivation, has already been planted with the 

 seeds of a great variety of trees, and large numbers of 

 forest and fruit trees ha\'e been planted. The results of 

 such experiments, if properly conducted, made in a region 

 where the annual rainfall is insutficient to secure a nat- 

 ural growth of trees, cannot fail to be interesting and valu- 

 able. If trees can be made to flourish permanently at 

 Dodge City, without the aid of irrigation, the important 

 facts will be demonstrated that cultivation can be depended 

 on to take, to a certain extent, the place of rain, and 

 that trees, if properly cared for, can be induced to grow 

 in regions which are naturally treeless, owing to natural 

 conditions unfavorable to tree growth. On the other hand, 

 if the trees jilanted at Dodge City are unable to support 

 the aridity of the Plains, these experiments should go far 

 to prove that a large part of the naturall)^ treeless region 

 in the interior of this Continent must, even under favor- 

 able conditions of cultivation, remain forever treeless. 

 Mr. Bartlett has a problem to solve of great public im- 

 portance, and (he results of his experiments will be 

 watched Avith interest. 



Climate of the Prairies. 



IN a paper read before the American Pomological So- 

 ciety at Grand Rapids, INIichigan, on "Hard Prob- 

 lems in Pomology," I said : "Year after year since 1856-7 

 our lists of fruits, shrubs and trees for general culture have 

 been revised by the active horticultural societies of the 

 Prairie-States, yet to-day the northern half of Iowa and Il- 

 linois, and the southern half of Minnesota and Wisconsin, 

 can show more dead or crippled trees and shrubs than has 

 been known in the world's history at any one time." 



The real causes of this general wreck of trees and shrubs 

 listed as " hardy" east of the lakes do not seem to be well 

 understood. The common impression at the east seems 

 to be that our orchard troubles are caused by winters far 

 more severe than are known in any part of New York. 



In reality our mid-continental extremes of heat and 

 moisture of air during summer and autumn have most to 

 do with the health and longevity of our ligneous plants. 

 When our first settlers built their cabins on the borders of 

 our isolated groves and river timber-lielts, they could not 

 fail to notice the absence of the Mosses, the Laurels, the 

 Rhododendrons, the Conifers, and the plants generally of 



