September 8 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



349 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN AND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, New York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



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



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY. SEPTEMBER 8, 1897. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article:— Native Plants for Ornamental Planting 349 



The Wayland Group of Plums Professor F. A. IVaugh. 350 



What Can be Done in Nine Years Mrs. J H. Robbins. 351 



Plant Notes :— Romneya Coulteri. (With figure ) J.N. Gerard. 352 



Cultural Department:— Hybridizing Sarracenias G. W Oliver. 353 



Seasonable Notes IV. N.Craig. 354 



Work of the Season IV. H. Tallin. 354 



Chrysanthemums and Begonias T. D. Hatfield. 355 



Antirrhinums William Scott. 355 



Carex Japonica, Clematis tubulosa, Kelway*s Delphinium, Violas, or 



Tutted Pansies T. D. H. 356 



Correspondence :— Notes from West Virginia Danske Dandridge. 356 



Notes from Germantown Joseph Meghan. 356 



Some Utah Shade-trees Professor F. C. Sears. 356 



Recent Publications — • 357 



Notes 35$ 



Illustration :— A Flower ot Romneya Coulteri, Fig. 46 353 



Native Plants for Ornamental Planting. 



WE spoke last week of the advisability of using in- 

 digenous plants for the adornment of small country- 

 places rather than the showy exotics and abnormal garden 

 varieties which are generally preferred. We had in mind, 

 especially, the resources of those beautiful thickly-wooded 

 districts in northern New Jersey and southern New York 

 where many residents of Manhattan have recently created 

 summer homes for themselves. Let us now consider a 

 little more carefully the supplies which Nature furnishes in 

 these regions and the ways in which the owner of a small 

 place would profit if, turning his back on the nurseryman 

 and his seductive catalogues, he were wise enough to make 

 use of them. 



Where the forests have recently been cut away some of 

 the largest and most vigorous trees have usually been 

 retained — Sugar Maples, Hickories, Hemlocks, Beeches, 

 Chestnuts and Oaks of several kinds ; trees which had 

 beaten their associates in the local struggle for life, and 

 were therefore the finest that the given piece of ground 

 supplied. But from about and beneath these their lesser 

 companions have been removed; and then, where further 

 planting was desired, trees from other regions or showy 

 garden specimens have generally been introduced — Swiss 

 and Austrian Pines, Blue Spruces from the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, Lawson's Cypress, Beeches of weeping habit or with 

 copper-colored foliage, Prunus Pissardii, cut-leaved Birches, 

 striped Negundos and others. Little attempt has been 

 made to group these introductions so that they will show 

 at their best; and even if they were as agreeably arranged 

 as possible, they would not harmonize with the native trees 

 as well as would other species brought in from the native 

 forest. 



Here might be found in profusion, as has already been 

 suggested, trees of various sizes and of the most diverse 

 kinds of beauty — the Shad-bush and the Dogwood to 

 bloom in early spring ; the Yellow Birch, bright of bark and 

 delicate of foliage ; the Sassafras, with its peculiar leaves 

 and varied tints of green ; the White Pine, more delicate in 

 its foliage and more picturesque in its hain't than its Swiss 

 and Austrian cousins ; the Wild Cherry, with its profusion 



of fruit; the Hop Hornbeam, with its tassels of seed, and 

 many more besides. All of these would be more sure than 

 foreign trees or garden varieties to grow finely under local 

 conditions, and much more sure to harmonize well with 

 the larger Maples, Oaks and Chestnuts. And there are 

 other reasons also why it would seem, an intelligent 

 planter should prefer to introduce them in his ornamental 

 grounds. He need not fear that if he confined himself to 

 them his place would lack individuality — would look too 

 much like a corner reserved from the original forest, too 

 little like a creation of art. In the forest secondary trees 

 do not get a chance to develop fully and finely. They 

 grow as they can, in thin and straggling shapes, some- 

 times stunted of their height, or often drawn out by their 

 search for light into tall stems merely topped by a narrow 

 head of foliage. Of course, even thus they minister to 

 beauty, bringing their several quotas to the compound 

 charm of the forest. But it is only here and there in the 

 thinned border of the woods, or surviving by chance along 

 the brookside or the margin of a meadow, that they give a 

 hint of the beauty they might attain under freer conditions, 

 and this can hardly be completely shown until they are 

 placed in isolation where the hand of man can tend them. 

 The Dogwood of the forest spreads admirable sheets of 

 bloom among the stems and branches of its crowding 

 neighbors. But if planted on a lawn it reveals unsuspected 

 beauties of shape and foliage. The Red Cedar, which may 

 be shapeless in the woods, will assume a strict pyramidal 

 habit of admirable outline if grown by itself, and few 

 imported pyramidal trees can do better service where 

 a somewhat formal feature is desired. The Yellow Birch 

 cannot reveal its possibilities of charm unless it is seen by 

 itself, the delicate leafage sweeping the grass and the 

 brilliant bark gleaming through it. The young White Pine, 

 most often ragged and scrawny as it grows amid other 

 close-pressing trees, is a compact, symmetrical mass of 

 feathery needles when it has a better chance ; and its 

 progress from this shrub-like phase to the bold picturesque- 

 ness of its later years is one of the most interesting things 

 in nature for the observant eye to watch. And so it is 

 with every native tree : give it a better chance than the 

 struggle for life of the forest affords and it will surprise us 

 with unsuspected charms. It ought to be more interesting 

 to an intelligent planter thus to develop the beauty of 

 indigenous trees which will quickly and gratefully reward 

 his care, than to cultivate exotics which are less well 

 suited, perhaps, to local conditions, and with which he 

 can hardly hope to achieve the same success that has been 

 achieved by the practiced nurseryman from whom he has 

 purchased them. To feel that he is completing Nature's 

 intentions in developing the plants with which she has 

 supplied his locality more perfectly than she is able to do, 

 ought to satisfy him better than the effort to grow plants 

 which she has meant should grow under different condi- 

 tions, and to combine things which she has kept far apart. 

 And, we repeat, the variety which he desires in his grounds 

 may thus be amply secured. 



The current preference for exotics and garden varieties 

 seems even less comprehensible in regard to shrubs than 

 in regard to trees. The Golden Elders, the piebald Retino- 

 sporas, stiff Altheas and coarse panicled Hydrangeas, 

 which we see repeated in such wearisome profusion, are 

 really less beautiful than our native shrubs — the Mountain 

 Laurel, the Viburnums, the Sumachs, the Elders with black 

 berries or red, the Spirceas, the New Jersey Tea, and a score 

 of their congeners. And with vines and creepers the case 

 may be even more strongly put. The region which we 

 have now in mind supplies some of the most beautiful 

 creeping and twining plants in the world : several kinds of 

 Grape, one with broad, slightly lobed leaves and another 

 with darker leaves deeply lobed into an almost architec- 

 tural form : the Virginia Creeper, the Bittersweet, and the 

 Virgin's Bower, a wealth of starry white blossoms in August 

 and later loaded with long tufted seeds. Yet place after 

 place in this region may be examined and no creeper be 



