April 25, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



161 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BV 



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, APRIL 25, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— A City Garden 161 



Notes of Mexican Travel : Zapotlan and the Nevado of Colima. — VIII., 



C. G. Pringlc. 162 



Monoecious or Polygamous Poplars and Willows J. G. Jack. 163 



Plant Notes :— The Date Palm. (With figure.) 164 



Foreign Correspondence : — London Letter W. Watson. 164 



Cultural Department : — Work in Glass Houses W. H. Tafilin. 166 



Spring Flowers J. N. Gerard. 166 



Cannas T. D. //. 167 



Begonias T. D. H. 167 



Hydrangeas on Single Stems, Azalea Indica William Scott. 167 



Winter Apples, Growing Seedling Fruit-trees T. H. Hoskins, M.D. 167, 168 



Correspondence :— Lilacs S. 168 



The Untimely Frost Professor W. F. Massey. 168 



Roses and Cannas at Tarry town, New York S. 168 



Notes 17° 



Illustration :— The Date Palm in Egypt, Fig. 31 165 



A City Garden. 



ONE of the famous small gardens of the world is at- 

 tached to the dwelling of the Borsig family in Berlin, 

 and an abstract of an account of it, recently published in 

 Gartenflora. may be of service here, as showing what may 

 be accomplished upon a small area under urban conditions, 

 if wealth is aided by patience, intelligence and a real in- 

 terest on the part of the owners. 



The wealth of this family dates from the introduction of 

 railways into Germany. In 1841 the first locomotive built 

 in that country was finished in the shops of August Borsig, 

 and when he died, in 1854, the five-hundredth locomotive 

 of his manufacture had just been completed. About the 

 year 1845 he purchased, in a suburb of Berlin, which has 

 since become a part of the city, a modest dwelling-house 

 and a very much-neglected and almost barren garden cover- 

 ing about thirteen acres of land. Intending it at first merely 

 for a quiet summer retreat, he soon transformed it into a 

 fine residence and made it his permanent home. Strack, 

 one of the foremost architects of the day, built him a large 

 but simple and dignified house ; Lenne, the leading land- 

 scape-gardener of Germany, laid out his garden, and he 

 himself designed the glass houses, using methods of iron 

 construction which were then quite novel. 



To perfect the garden as quickly as possible neither 

 pains nor money was spared, and large old trees were 

 transplanted, among them an Oak ten feet in circumfer- 

 ence, which was brought a distance of 1,700 feet, and many 

 of its neighbors were of almost equal size. A winter garden 

 filled with flowering plants was supplemented by an im- 

 mense Palm-house. In building and filling this house, 

 Herr Borsig was helped by the botanist Von Warscewicz, 

 and in return the engine-builder assisted him in the prose- 

 cution of his explorations in tropical lands. Professor Kar- 

 sten further enriched this collection with some Tree-ferns 

 which he had just brought home from tropical America. 



In 1849 Herr Borsig built iron-works not far from his 

 villa, and he was the first to conceive an idea, which has 

 since been often imitated in this country and in Europe, 

 of conveying waste hot-water from the factory to his gar- 

 den-tanks, where tropical aquatics were grown in the open 



air. As soon as Schomburgk had introduced the Victoria 

 Regia it was planted in the Borsig garden, and there in a 

 little temple-like greenhouse, specially devoted to it, the 

 first flowers which it produced in Berlin unfolded during 

 the summer of 1852. 



It is not strange that such a collection of interesting 

 plants, charmingly housed and grouped, should soon have 

 become widely known, but in our restless times it is re- 

 markable that this place, created fifty years since, should 

 still preserve its beauty and importance. The work and 

 the pleasure of his father were continued by Herr Albert 

 Borsig, and now that he also is dead, his widow still tends 

 the garden and villa with intelligence and love. 



One of the additions to the riches of the garden made by 

 the younger Borsig was the famous Hanbury collection of 

 Orchids, which he bought entire in London for $10,000. 

 He also collected a large library of gardening literature, 

 which embraces the collection of Eduard Haenel, famous 

 in its day. His care for individual objects of interest is 

 shown by the fact that when the Araucarias, which his 

 father had planted, grew too tall to be protected by boards 

 in winter, he built a covering of glass and iron which 

 could easily be put together when the season required, 

 and also could be extended at the top as the future growth 

 of the trees might require. 



Berlin has to-day a much longer list of attractive sights 

 than it had in the time of the first Borsig ; but the gardens 

 which he established, and which his son improved, are still 

 prominent attractions to natives and strangers, and the 

 original owner's hospitality to visitors continues to be the 

 family creed. Camellias have never gone out of fashion 

 in Germany as they have in this country ; and when the 

 ranks of fine old Camellia-trees in the Winter-garden are 

 loaded with flowers the stream of sight-seers is more con- 

 stant than at any other time of the year. 



Several instructive pictures of these gardens and green- 

 houses are given with the article in Garlenflora ; but 

 specially interesting is the one which shows the way in 

 which the loggia and the veranda are connected, and their 

 relation to the house. The veranda lies against a portion 

 of the back of the house, whence the gardens extend ; it is 

 wide and square, raised high above the ground to a level 

 with the main floor of the house, and approached from one 

 side by a flight of sixteen steps running parallel with the 

 wall of the house. This flight is comparatively narrow at 

 the top, but six steps from the bottom it broadens out to 

 the full width of the veranda, thus supplying a sort of in- 

 termediate terrace. Here on either side of the upper steps, 

 and backed against the base-wall of the veranda, are rich 

 masses of flowering plants, uniting with vines, which 

 clothe this wall and the veranda-posts, and they are pro- 

 fusely trained against the house itself. From the broad 

 lower portion of the stairway rise four tall plain stone 

 pedestals supporting statues which are copies of fine an- 

 tique originals, and against the base of each of these pedes- 

 tals is again a mass of flowering plants in pots.. Orna- 

 mental iron-work forms the balustrades and posts of the 

 veranda, and its roof seems to be of the same material. 

 From the side of the back portion of the veranda the loggia 

 stretches away at right angles to the house, and the heavy 

 foliage of a great tree, which springs up behind it, unites 

 the two structures, of different heights, into an harmonious 

 whole. 



The great interest of this picture is that it shows the ad- 

 vantage of bringing architectural and natural elements into 

 integral relationship with each other. Too often in this 

 country we build a house and plant a garden as though 

 neither was concerned in the aspect of the other ; and the 

 result, of course, is a want of union and harmony destruc- 

 tive to the true beauty of both. Not many dwellers in our 

 large cities can hope to have gardens as extensive as this 

 one. But there are plenty of residences in our eastern 

 towns, of the second class, where the grounds are as exten- 

 sive, and where great architectural ambition is expressed 

 in the house ; and even the most costly houses in the prin- 



