August 22, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



33i 



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, AUGUST 22, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Article :— A Border of Hardy Perennials 331 



Some Trees at Rancho Chico Charles Howard Shinn. 332 



Foreign Correspondence: — The Herbaceous Border IV. Watson. 333 



Plant Notes 333 



New or Little-known Plants :— Cereus Pecten-aboriginum. (With figure.). . 334 



Cultural Department: — Some Raspberry Crosses Fred IV. Card. 334 



Cannas T. D. Hatfield. 336 



Violet Notes IV. N. Craig. 336 



The Quince Rust G. Harold Poivell. 337 



Correspondence: — A Border of Herbaceous Perennials H. S. H. 337 



Chrysanthemums tor Exhibitions T. D. Hatfield. 337 



The Forest : — Mixed Oak and Beech Forests of the Spessart : Management by 



the Bavarian Government. — V Sir Dietrich Brandis. 338 



Meetings of Societies : — Agricultural Science in Brooklyn 339 



Notes 34° 



Illustration : — Cereus Pectum-aboriginum, in Sonora, Fig. 54 335 



A Border of Hardy Perennials. 



A SUGGESTIVE letter on this subject will be found in 

 our correspondence column this week — a letter which 

 touches upon many interesting subjects, to some of which 

 we shall make reference in future issues. It is true that no 

 part of the flower-garden is quite as attractive as that which 

 is devoted to hardy herbaceous perennials, and these plants 

 are invested with a charm of their own which other plants 

 and other classes of plants do not possess. A garden is 

 never quite as satisfactory at any other time of year as it is 

 in the spring, and all the flowers in a spring garden are 

 those of such sturdy constitution that they can endure the 

 cold of our winters, while a large portion of them live on 

 and flower again the next spring, and, indeed, for a long 

 succession of springs. Perennials which bloom at other 

 seasons, besides their intrinsic beauty, also command a 

 certain respect for their ability to live on and flower with 

 increasing vigor year after year without any annual 

 preparation of the ground and sowing of the seed. Many 

 of them are better for cutting and for other uses than are 

 annuals or the tender species which have to be housed 

 every year, and they can be used in an infinite number of 

 ways for the decoration of gardens small and large. 



But every plant, as well as every class of plants, has its 

 limitations, and there are some purposes to which hardy 

 perennials are not adapted. Interesting as they are indi- 

 vidually, it is impossible to fill a large border with a selec- 

 tion of these plants alone which shall be constantly in 

 bloom and be disposed in such a way that the flow- 

 ers shall at all times present a picture of harmonious 

 form and color. If the bed presents a certain scheme of 

 color in early spring, and a succession could be arranged 

 so that as one blue flower fades another flower of the same 

 color would be ready to take up its work, and the same 

 scheme could be carried out with yellow flowers and those 

 of other shades, the same colors and the same arrangement 

 of colors would be maintained the season through, and the 

 picture would become as tiresome and monotonous as a 

 pattern bed of Coleus. Fortunately, this is not possible. 



Very plainly, too, as the colors of each portion of the bed 

 vary from week to week, some flowers lasting for a few 

 days and others perhaps as many weeks, the problem of 

 adjusting these shifting colors so that they will constantly 

 arrange themselves into new and equally harmonious com- 

 binations becomes too intricate for any practical solution. 

 It is not difficult to construct a single picture for any given 

 season, but when its elements are constantly changing, so 

 that one picture passes fluently into quite a different one, 

 it would baffle any skill to have all these transformations 

 equally beautiful and developing into new and rich har- 

 monies of color during all the flowering period. 



But, even if 'we could figure out the necessary permuta- 

 tions and combinations for such a result, we should still 

 fail of our continuous picture, because it is impossible to 

 keep a perennial border filled with plants in flower. It is 

 very true, for example, that when the tops of some of the 

 bulbous plants die down and become unsightly we may ar- 

 range to have their places filled with other flowering 

 plants without much or any detriment to the strength 

 of the bulbs for another year. But this only provides 

 for a second period of bloom, and by no means for the , 

 entire season. There are many other perennials, as, for 

 example, our beautiful Mertensia Virginica, which flowers 

 in early spring and soon dies completely out of sight, and 

 we may have planted near it the blue Plumbago, Cera- 

 tostigma plumbaginoides, which hardly appears above the 

 ground until the Lungwort has disappeared, and which will 

 bloom from midsummer until frost. But, of course, there 

 will be a period between the flowering of these two plants 

 when the space which they occupy will show no flowers. 

 The only possible way of keeping a border filled with 

 flowers is to have reserve supplies of annuals and other 

 plants to take up and put in their places when their flower- 

 ing season is done. We may sow the seeds of such an- 

 nuals as Shirley Poppies or Centaurea in the autumn 

 among our Narcissus-bulbs, and these will flower as the 

 tops perish. But after they are gone the space can only be 

 occupied by plants which have been grown elsewhere for 

 this purpose. But, again, there are a great many peren- 

 nials which do not entirely die away. Some of them will 

 have unsightly fruit, and the dead stalks which bear them 

 can be cut away, but there will be a mass of foliage which 

 must live through the summer to store up food in the stout 

 roots which are to produce the next spring's flowers. 

 Some of them die completely down in midsummer, like 

 the Ascension Lily, but these may soon throw out leaves 

 to build up bulbs again, and remain green all winter. Of 

 course, the late-flowering species must occupy the ground all 

 summer, so that, altogether, while it is a practicable mat- 

 ter to have hardy herbaceous perennial plants flowering in 

 abundance at all seasons, from early spring till frost, it is 

 not possible to make a bed out of them exclusively which, 

 for general effect shall be satisfactory the season through. 



But this only means that there is one use to which hardy 

 perennial flowering plants are not quite adapted. They are 

 valuable in so many other directions, however, that there 

 is little danger that any horticultural writer will say too 

 much about them. We agree with our correspondent that 

 in describing them, as well, indeed, as in describing every 

 other plant, their defects, as well as their beauties, should 

 be pointed out, and that an explanation of the peculiar 

 habits and characters, the likes and dislikes of each indi- 

 vidual, so far as it is possible, should always be fully set 

 forth. Mere lists of plants, or skeleton descriptions which 

 place each one of a long series of plants in the same 

 plane without any perspective, are really of no use to the 

 novice. It has been our custom rather to give full details 

 of the character and habits of a few plants in each issue of 

 this journal, than to spin out a catalogue which is little more 

 than a list of names. Readers who begin to take an in- 

 terest in any plant will find it a good exercise to examine 

 the back volumes of Garden and Forest, which is not a 

 difficult thing owing to the careful index which we have 

 made every year. All the perennial plants which are essen- 



