February , 1909 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



an avenue of horse chestnuts about a mile 

 long at Bushey Park, and I fancy the trees 

 are eighty feet high. (Pictured on page 

 26.) When "Chestnut Sunday" ap- 

 proaches, the London papers tell their 

 readers, and great crowds flock to see the 

 spectacle. We can grow the horse chestnut 

 quite as well as England, but we commonly 

 use it for shade or street planting, for both 

 of which purposes it is ill adapted. Street 

 robberies are easily committed under its 

 too dense shade, and the ground beneath 

 horse chestnuts is often clammy. 



There are only a few flowering trees that 

 grow to great size, and since large trees are 

 not wanted in a flower garden, these are 

 fittest for a large lawn. Next to the horse 

 chestnut the best tall flowering trees are 

 tulip tree, false acacia, empress tree and 

 Japanese varnish tree, all of which, I believe, 

 we ought to grow better than the English 

 can. 



The most popular flowering trees are the 

 small ones, since the flowers can be seen 

 and picked easily. Many people who have 

 not been to England suppose that the 

 commonest flowering tree there is the haw- 

 thorn with double red flowers, and conse- 

 quently our yards are full of it. This is an 

 unfortunate mistake, for the common Eng- 

 lish hawthorn is white and single. All the 

 red and double hawthorns have come from 

 a -wholly different species (Cratagus mono- 

 gyna), although hundreds of nursery cata- 

 logues still indicate that they were derived 

 from Cratagus Oxyacantha — an immortal 

 error. You do not see double red haw- 

 thorns everywhere in England because 

 double flowers and unnatural colors are not 

 considered suitable for lawns. The prin- 

 ciple has been well stated by our great 

 American landscape designer, Mr. Warren 

 H. Manning: Horticultural forms originated 

 in the garden; they should be restricted to it, 

 and not allowed to dominate the landscape. 

 The showy thing we do is to put pink 

 dogwood and Bechtel's flowering crab on 

 the lawn. The refined thing is to plant 

 white dogwood on the lawn or pink dog- 

 wood in the garden. 



I did not see any flowering effects with 

 trees that struck me as particularly English. 

 I believe we can get the equivalent of their 

 hawthorns with our native species, but not 

 with the European. Our strong card, how- 

 ever, is our native dogwood. We can grow 

 magnolias quite as well, and our western 

 catalpa is suitable for lawns, but until the 

 day of public spraying comes we should go 

 slow on everything of the rose tribe, because 

 these plants are subject to San Jose scale. 

 I refer to Prunus and Pyrus, which include 

 the flowering cherries, plums, peaches, 

 apples, pears, and quinces.* 



THE COLORED FOLIAGE EFFECT 



Fortunately flowering trees are showy, as 

 a rule, only when in bloom. Otherwise 

 they would get stale, like a bed of Baby 

 Rambler rose or any other "ever-blooming" 

 bore. But purple leaves are vociferously 



*For important articles on flowering trees see The Garden 

 Magazine, Vol. VI, p. 128, and Vol. VIII, pp. 330-332. 



An American catalpa in England, showing the breadth and nobility we could get by planting our own 

 trees and giving them plenty of room to grow 



purple for months at a time, and that is 

 why we love them. Trees with abnormally 

 colored foliage make the most show for the 

 money, and we love to advertise. The 

 English don't. Nature almost never gives 

 us purple or yellow leaves — except in 

 autumn. No place can be restful unless 

 green is dominant. Of purple, golden, and 

 silver tones we get plenty for daily purposes 

 in our ordinary trees, but bronze-leaved 

 ashes and purple elms, plums, and catalpas 

 are tiresome to live with. You may be 

 greatly excited at the first sight of a huge 

 blotch of yellow on the landscape, but when 

 you come close you find that it is only an 

 elm, oak, poplar, or box elder gone wrong. 

 And after you have resolved about twenty 



such cases into mere yellow journalism, the 

 sensation gets a bit sickening. 



The plants just mentioned are what 

 William Robinson calls "tree rubbish." 

 The dignified and lasting members of the 

 group are the purple beech and purple 

 Norway maple. It is right, also, that we 

 should pay big sums for Japanese maples, 

 although they are uncertain about growing. 

 But even these we overdo. 



THE CUT-LEAVED EFFECT 



Only one degree less vulgar than a pre- 

 ponderance of abnormally colored foliage 

 is a preponderance of cut-leaved trees. 

 Must everything be shredded for us from 

 breakfast food to the trees on our lawn? 











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The English love the oak best of all trees because it lives longest. Some day oaks will be first in 

 our hearts also. We have many kinds, England only two 



