September 2, 1891.] 



Garden and Forest. 



417 



so easily that it is rather difficult to get what result you desire, 

 but out of a batch of fifty seedlings "there will usually be a few 

 worth selecting. 



Flowers for Late Summer.— A bed of Ghent Azaleas below 

 the pavilion in Mr. Walter Hunnevvell's garden makes a lovely 

 picture in spring, with a few blue-flowered German Iris and 

 Columbines dotted among them, as their colors harmonize 

 admirably with the yellow-orange and the pink of the Azaleas. 

 Though gorgeous while they last, their blooming is short and 

 so early in the season that we fill out the bed with Dahlias, 

 Gladioluses, Tritomas, Crocosmias, Galtonias, Sunflowers and 

 various other summer-blooming annuals, which keep up a 

 continuity of bloom and furnish abundant flowers for cutting. 

 The bed is thus kept gay when otherwise it would remain dull 

 and unattractive through the long summer. While the rock gar- 

 den shows to better advantage in spring than at any later season, 

 we nevertheless have a few flowers at all times. Conspicuous 

 for a long time have been Campamda gratidifiora, var. pumila 

 (Mariesii), the best of all the Chinese Bellflowers ; CEno- 

 thera Missouriensis ; Clematis Davidiana, a lovely bush-Cle- 

 matis, with small, tubular, light blue flowers, which are fra- 

 grant ; C. tubulosa, of similar habit, but dark blue flowers, and 

 a neat trailing Rose, R. bracteata, with large white flowers. 

 Campanula rotundifolia, the true Blue Bell of Scotland, and 

 Geranium sanguineum are all worthy of note at this season. 



Wellesley, Mass. T - D - Hatfield. 



Baptisias.— Some of these native plants are worthy of a 

 place in the garden. They are all herbaceous perennials, and 

 useful for filling-in large mixed beds or borders and for dot- 

 ting among shrubs of dwarf growth. B. australis, the Blue 

 False Indigo, is perhaps the best species. It is found wild 

 from Pennsylvania westward to Arkansas. The growth is 

 dense, and the numerous stems and branches are thickly 

 clothed with ternate leaves of milky-green color. The large 

 flowers, like those of the ordinary pea in -iorm, are borne in 

 racemes from eighteen to twenty-four inches long, the largest 

 of which carry from thirty to forty flowers during the month 

 of June. B. leucajitha is a foot taller, with larger leaves, but 

 less compact in habit, the stems branching only at the top. 

 The flowers are white, and the plant, which also blooms in 

 June, is common in the south. B. tinctoria, Wild Indigo, the 

 common way-side plant, is the" most floriferous species. It 

 resembles B. australis in general habit, but is smaller in every 

 respect, and bears quantities of yellow flowers in June and 

 July. These plants thrive luxuriantly in- any ordinary garden 

 soil, and in any position not exceptionally dry or too much 

 shaded by overhanging trees. They stand severe drought 

 much better than a great many of our herbaceous plants, and 

 that is a matter of some importance in dry seasons. Propaga- 

 tion is readily effected by division of established clumps early 

 in spring, or by the seeds, which ripen freely. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



M. Barker. 



Correspondence. 

 What is a " Garden "? 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I wish I always had time to thank you fully for your 

 various references to my words, but I cut the following from 

 your number for July 24th, and wonder a little at it : 



For example, Mr. William Robinson, writing recently in The Gar- 

 den, used the word "garden" to indicate the grounds forming the 

 immediate ornamental environment of the house, though this word is 

 commonly employed to designate a place in which flowers are grown. 

 He explained, however, that the lawn must be " the heart of an En- 

 glish garden." To indicate these same grounds Mr. Parsons uses the 

 word "lawn," although the very first sentence of his first chapter 

 explains that " to the minds of most readers the lawn suggests simply 

 grass." He might better have employed the term "home grounds," 

 a term that once was generally used, but now appears to have gone 

 somewhat out of fashion. 



Country places and gardens are so different in America that 

 these may explain your writer's doubt, but to us there is no 

 confusion, and as gardening is of such long-standing impor- 

 tance with us we may perhaps be allowed to define a garden ! 

 Certainly it is not confined in any such way as this paragraph 

 suggests, but broadly means the whole of the grounds given 

 to gardening of whatever kind it be. There are all sorts of 

 gardens. Of course the lawn is generally a part of the garden, 

 save in few cases, where very large lawns would be formed 

 for archery or any like game. "Home grounds" — home 

 lands— may be rightly used as regards the ornamental parts of 

 the garden, but the grand old name of garden covers all. In 



this cotintry, where there are inconceivable degrees in the size 

 and nature of gardens, any kind of classification of them is not 

 possible or desirable, but we agree in the term garden for all. 

 We say Glasnevin is a fine garden, and of Longleat, the gar- 

 dens — two wholly different kinds of garden — are beautiful. 



The way you use the term landscape-gardener shows the 

 range of the word, and, of course, his work has more to do 

 with the ornamental parts than with the gardens for fruit or 



flowers - w n 1 ■ 



Office of The Garden, London. W. AOOIJISOJI. 



How the Red Cedar Grows in New England. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I recently purchased nine extra large Red Cedar posts 

 to support the floor-timbers under a new barn. These aver- 

 aged three feet in circumference near the ground. On count- 

 ing the rings of growth, I was surprised to find that there were 

 but seventy-six in the largest of them, and that a third of these 

 were in the inch and a half of white sap-wood which sur- 

 rounded the heart-wood. These Cedars grew among other 

 large trees, on a strong loamy soil in the town of Danvers, 

 Massachusetts. 



Marblehead, Mass. /• /• H. Gregory. 



Periodical Literature. 

 A Ride Through the Caucasian Mountains. 



-I. 



T^vR. DIECK, the well-known German dendrologist, has 

 •*— ' begun to publish in Gartenflora an account of the jour- 

 neys he made last summer in the Transcaspian provinces, 

 and we have thought that an abbreviated translation of his 

 first article, which is called " The Primeval Abchasian Forest," 

 might interest our readers. 



Going by steamer from Odessa the author landed at Suchum 

 Kale, where he found both a public and a private botanical 

 garden. Here, as well as in the town parks and avenues, a 

 subtropical vegetation predominates, so that one might 

 almost think one's self in Palermo or Alexandria. The Al- 

 bizzia and the Sterculia are the favorite trees, but the Dios- 

 pyros, the Eucalyptus and the Paulownia also occur with many 

 Palms, and what Dr. Dieck, pursued by memories of prevail- 

 ing European fashions, rather plaintively calls " the unescap- 

 able variegated Negundo." Mexican, Californian and Indian 

 conifers flourish admirably, and one of the most beautiful 

 objects near the shore is a fine group of Pinus insignis. Indig- 

 enous plants are, indeed, almost wholly neglected, for only 

 the Cherry Laurel and the Date Palm appear in any quantity, 

 mingled with acclimatfzed Pittosporums and Escallonias, 

 Evonymus and Magnolias, Myrtles and Pomegranates. The 

 Tea-plant also grows so well that Dr. Dieck believes Russia 

 might supply itself with the greater part of the enormous 

 quantity of tea it consumes if the many hundred square miles 

 of now unused land in the Transcaucasian region were to be 

 devoted to its cultivation. 



But the traveler's chief wish was to explore the virgin forests 

 of the Caucasus where " uncontrolled nature reigns in moun- 

 tain regions which have been almost depopulated by emigra- 

 tion, and where only on the borders of the sea is the axe of 

 the wood-cutter beginning its work of destruction." Accom- 

 panied for a time by a number of companions, some of whom 

 were scientific students, he noticed first, as the road from 

 Suchum skirted the water, impenetrable thickets formed by 

 Paliurus aculeatus, Hippophae rhamnoides and a high-growing 

 Rubus with pale blue-green branchlets and gray-green leaves 

 resembling R. lomentosus, which is one of the most charac- 

 teristic plants of the Pontine coast. 1 



After passing the Kelasuri and Madschara Rivers a fruitful, 

 and, in places, marshy region was reached, the region of 

 Alders and Pterocarya, of Smilax and wild Grapes. In the 

 distance little appeared except Salix alba in a form peculiar to 

 the Orient, which has very sparse foliage, so that though the 

 trees are finely developed they have a thin appearance. 

 Among these Alders and Willows the Pterocarya fraxi7iifolia 

 made a fine effect, although the author says that he seldom 

 found it growing as well as it does in Germany, the trees hav- 

 ing a tendency to branch at or near the ground and assume a 

 shrubby habit. 



Carpinus Betulus, Quercus sessiliflora and Diospyros Lotus 

 appear as the road turns inland, accompanied by Rubus tne- 

 ridionalis ; Smilax excelsa and Clematis vitalba swing them- 

 selves from tree to tree, and, with the Brambles, make a 

 jungle of the forest whence the trees valuable for timber have 

 been cut away. Among the shrubs almost everything else is 

 crowded out by a European Elder and Fern (Sambticus Ebulus 



