November 14, 1894.] 



Garden and Forest. 



45i 



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, NOVEMBER 14, 1894. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Pinetum at Wellesley. (With figure.) ... 451 



Gardening at Newport 452 



Foreign Correspondence: — London Letter W. Watson, 453 



Plant Notes 454 



Cultural Department: — Work in the Greenhouse Plantsman. 454 



Plants under Glass E. O. Orpet. 456 



Bordeaux Mixture and the Potassium ferrocyanideTest. .E. G. Lodeman. 456 



Mushrooms William Scott. 457 



Correspondence: — Planting Seeds of Cedar of Lebanon B. 457 



November Flowers in Vermont F. H. H. 458 



November in a New Jersey Garden Mrs. Mary Treat. 458 



Exhibitions: — Chrysanthemums at Philadelphia 458 



Chrysanthemums at Boston 459 



A Flower-show in New York J. N. Gerard. 459 



Notes 460 



Illustration: — View in Mr. Hunnewell's Pinetum, at Wellesley, Massachu- 

 setts, Fig. 71 455 



The Pinetum at Wellesley. 



THERE are few large collections of Conifers in this 

 country where the trees have attained an age which 

 enables a student to form a satisfactory idea of their ap- 

 pearance and behavior as they reach or approach 

 maturity. The Pinetum, planted twenty years ago by 

 Josiah Hoopes, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, taken in 

 connection with the trees planted by his father twenty 

 years earlier, is most interesting and instructive, and it con- 

 tains specimens which cannot be matched elsewhere in the 

 country. At the Arnold Arboretum a most comprehensive 

 collection is already made, but the trees are still in their in- 

 fancy ; there are some noteworthy private collections, too, 

 like that of Mr. Charles A. Dana, on Long Island, but the 

 Pinetum at Wellesley is, beyond question, the most complete 

 and satisfactory which has yet been established in this 

 country. It is not only unsurpassed in the number of spe- 

 cies and varieties it contains, but ever since the trees were 

 planted they have had persistent, intelligent and affection- 

 ate care, so that the individual specimens are as conspicu- 

 ous for vigor and beauty as the collection is for its richness 

 in varied forms. 



The story of the Wellesley gardens has been told more 

 than once in these columns, and Mr. H. H. Hunnewell, the 

 proprietor of the famous place, is well known as the most 

 generous patron of horticulture which this country has yet 

 produced. As long ago as 1851, Mr. Hunnewell began to 

 transform some forty acres of his large estate into an orna- 

 mental garden. It was rather an actual creation than a 

 transformation, for the land was flat and featureless, appa- 

 rently an arid waste, except where it was covered with a 

 tangle of scrubby Pines and Birches. Hardly a tree then 

 standing on these acres now remains, a conspicuous excep- 

 tion being an Oak which had already reached splendid 

 proportions, and which has kept on growing in rugged 

 strength and in nobility of expression. The grounds at 

 Wellesley attract visitors from all over the country who 

 wish to inspect the trim Italian garden, or the other multi- 

 form features of the place, but Mr. Hunnewell set out to 

 make it especially strong in Rhododendrons and Conifers. 

 At that time little was known of the possible beauty of 

 the broad-leaved evergreens for outdoor cultivation here, 



and it was generally supposed that the choice Rhododen- 

 drons were unable to endure the rigor of our winters or the 

 drought of our fervid summers, but the proprietor of Wel- 

 lesley persisted in his purpose and has done more, perhaps, 

 than any other man to demonstrate the perfect adaptability 

 of many varieties with the brightest-colored flowers to the 

 trying climate of New England. 



For the purpose of a pinetum the light loamy soil of the 

 Wellesley garden, resting on a porous gravel, which insures 

 perfect drainage, is admirably suited, while the liberal 

 employment of peat and certain other fertilizing material 

 on the surface gives the trees the food they need. From 

 the outset Mr. Hunnewell had grown Conifers, but it was 

 not until 1S67 that he prepared an acre or two of ground 

 especially for the plantation in which he proposed to culti- 

 vate as many species and varieties as he found able to 

 make a satisfactory growth in a New England climate. 

 He began with about two hundred small nursery-trees, and 

 year by year increased their number and enlarged the area 

 of ground, until now, upon something more than ten acres, 

 can be found four hundred well grown specimens, some 

 species and varieties being represented by single indi- 

 viduals and others by several. Of course, many exotics 

 have failed to adapt themselves to their new surroundings, 

 and one after another they have been discarded when all 

 attempts to nurse them into vigorous life had failed. Of 

 late years, too, as the trees reached out and began to inter- 

 fere with each other, aggressive individuals here and there 

 have been cut down to furnish space for the development 

 of their neighbors. This has cost much labor and stern 

 determination, for some of the trees which have been 

 felled were quite as vigorous and promising as any that 

 were left. One who has watched the growth of a tree for 

 a quarter of a century naturally shrinks from destroying it, 

 but Mr. Hunnewell has cut down several Nordmann Firs, 

 for example, which were perfect specimens, thirty feet 

 high, because they began to trespass on their neighbors, 

 and he now plainly sees the wisdom of this course. The 

 trees are planted partly on the plateau or general level of 

 the garden, partly, on ground which slopes somewhat 

 abruptly into a ravine, so that there is a considerable 

 variety of surface, and a series of surprises awaits the vis- 

 itor who drives through the winding roads. It is difficult 

 to select any single view as representative of the whole, for 

 every rod furnishes a fresh picture and discloses new points 

 of interest. Our illustration on page 455 was chosen from 

 a number of photographs, not because it displays in any 

 marked degree the excellence of individual trees, or because 

 of any special superiority in their grouping, but mainly 

 because the camera chanced in this one to catch the erect 

 figure of Mr. Hunnewell, and show how lightly he bears 

 his more than fourscore years. 



Without giving a catalogue of the names of the different 

 Conifers which seem to enjoy life in this beautiful place, 

 it may be said that, including some garden forms with well- 

 established species and varieties, there are rather more than 

 a hundred represented here. The largest tree is a Norway 

 Spruce, which was planted forty-two years ago, and it is 

 now eighty feet high, with branches spreading over a circle 

 sixty feet in diameter. The White Pine in the collection 

 planted about the same time is not as tall, although there 

 is one on another part of the grounds which is considera- 

 bly larger. An American Hemlock, seventy feet tall ; a 

 White Spruce, several feet taller ; Cephlonian and Nordmann 

 Firs, planted in i860, and forty feet high; an Oriental 

 Spruce almost as large, and a Japanese Larch, Larix lepto- 

 lepis, more than fifty feet high ; a Douglas Spruce, thirty- 

 six feet high ; Abies concolor, thirty feet high, and a 

 Cilician Fir of about the same size ; a Pseudolarix, more than 

 twenty feet in height and with a trunk nearly four feet in cir- 

 cumference, are a few of the specimens which show how 

 rapidly this family of trees can develop in New England. All 

 the Conifers which can be found in other gardens, especially 

 forms of Taxus, Thuya, Tsuga and the like are seen here at 

 their very best with many plants like Abies nobilis, Abies 



