152 



The Garden Magazine, November, 1919 



not to say as much for it as it perhaps deserves, considered as 

 a jewel box in which to keep the plant rarities of the world. 



The cover design of this month's number, showing one of 

 the Passion Flowers that is perfectly practical to the open air 

 in Southern gardens is impossible to Northerners unless given 

 the little protection that a greenhouse may afford. That 

 may be taken as but one illustration out of many that could 

 be cited — plants that do not require excessive heat but do 

 require the tempering of the winter by glass. Is it not true 

 therefore that the greenhouse is actually a garden feature 

 which may well be given consideration in all garden plans? 



The Lure of 

 the Old 



THINGS of an age gone by we are apt 

 to wrap around with a mantle of venera- 

 tion, if not worship — sometimes just because 

 they are old, quite ignoring the very forcible 

 evidence that surrounds us that the new represents, on the 

 whole, progress. Or, if not actual progress, at least some 



effort to coordinate fact and time. Much of the old, just 

 the same, has its ample justification in having been the fullest 

 and perfect expression of its time. Whether this is true of 

 old-time gardens is a fair question for debate, because garden 

 art as such had to be superimposed on the primordial utility 

 garden. Sometimes the transition was painful (as we look 

 backwards); but even so since gardens are living organisms 

 they "evolve" themselves into a higher destiny. This per- 

 haps is the subtle charm of the old garden, which despite its 

 faults (if it have any) is a thing to love after all. What the 

 old-fashioned garden really is will be the subject of the De- 

 cember issue of the Garden Magazine; there will be illus- 

 trations of some really old gardens, and a general survey of 

 this alluring subject. While specifically the "Old Fashioned 

 Garden" number there will also be a seasonal appeal in Mr. 

 Wilson's " Romance of the Cedars of Lebanon," the most 

 majestic of all forest trees. The cover design is a reconstruction 

 of an old Elizabethan garden from an authoritative source. 



THE OPE^C OLUM: K^ 



Readers' Interchange of Experience and Comment 



Cutting Down COME time in the spring someone ques- 



Delphiniums O tioned about cutting down Delphi- 



niums after blossoming. We have very 

 beautiful ones and always cut them down 

 twice during the summer. Lhis summer they grew to six and seven 

 feet high and had wonderful flowers, the spikes of some were fifteen 

 inches long. Four years ago in June we had nothing in the way of 

 a garden — not even grass, but with the helpful information derived 

 from The Garden Magazine we now have a very wonderful one. 

 I have taken the magazine for many years and landscaped the whole 

 place from various numbers. — Mrs. S. D. Coughran, Worthington, 

 Minn. 



Phosphorus in j WAS much interested in H. N. Hutt's 



Fertilizers *■ successful endeavor to improve the yield 



and size of his asparagus and would like 

 to make a suggestion, He used acid phos- 

 phate, wood ashes and nitrate of soda. Wood ashes contains 6 to 

 7 per cent, potash and about 35 per cent. lime. Now, when acid 

 phosphate is mixed with wood ashes, the soluble or available phos- 

 phorus reverts to an insoluble form owing to the chemical action 

 of the lime and phosphate, and the value of the phosphorus is thus 

 lost. As phorphorus is needed principally for the full development 

 of seed and flower, it made little difference in the case of asparagus, 

 the wood ashes still yielding the much more needed potash, so neces- 

 sary for the development of stalk and fibre. This loss of phosphorus 

 when acid phosphate is mixed with wood ashes, as seed and fruit 

 crops such as corn, beans, tomatoes, eggplants, etc., all of them 

 needing available phosphorus, would be likely to fail if this mixture 

 was used and depended upon to furnish the needed phosphorus. 

 When wood ashes is the only form of potash at hand and phosphorus 

 is also needed, I would suggest using the slower acting bone- 

 meal. Any of the forms of potash, either the muriate or the nitrate 

 may be used with acid phosphate, and while prohibitive in price 

 for large operations, a single pound of muriate at 35 cts. a pound, 

 or of nitrate at 50 cts., goes a very long way in a home garden and 

 would prove ample for an ordinary bed. To this can be added 

 nitrate of soda for leaf development, in the proportion needed for 



the particular crop contemplated, and a perfect and quick acting 

 complete chemical fertilizer would be the result. — Louis Tocaben, 

 New York City. 



Habits of the 

 Greek Mullein 



1WAS interested to read in last month's 

 number a subscriber's experience with 

 the Greek Mullein (Verbascum olym- 

 picum). I have grown this plant for eight 

 years and have never known it to bloom the second year from seed. 

 It has been with me, as has the Chimney. Bellflower, quite con- 

 sistently a triennial, requiring three years from sowing to gather 

 strength to produce its great flower stalk. Miss (or Mrs.?) Rey- 

 nolds found that the plants left in their original places and not trans- 

 planted bloomed the second year like any other well behaved peren- 

 nial. But this has not been my experience. My plants self-sow 

 freely and many of the seedlings are left where they appear, but 

 this treatment has so far not had a hastening effect upon them. 

 Also I have never known the Greek Mullein to flower as early as 

 the twentieth of May. Indeed though Miss Reynolds garden is 

 considerably north of mine, my Greek Mulleins lag along, allowing 

 the three other kinds that we grow here — V. phlomoides, V. phoeni- 

 ceum, V. densiflorum and the white Miss Willmott to precede it 

 and only lighting its great candelabra by the first week in July. 

 All this only goes to show what tricks are played with the habits 

 of a plant by varying conditions of soil and aspect. We dare not 

 lay down the law too stoutly concerning the behavior of any plant. 

 — L. B. Wilder. 



A New Bush 

 Honeysuckle 



O* 



beautiful of recent introductions from 

 China is Lonicera syringantha Wolffi. A 

 specimen growing on the estate of Mrs. 

 Bayard Thayer, South Lancaster, Mass., raised from seed by the 

 Superintendent, William Anderson, is, at the end of six years, a 

 bush 28 feet in diameter though only 4 feet high at the centre. 

 The flowers are a beautiful lavender and foliage small, and it is 

 one of the most striking recent acquisitions to our hardy shrubs. 

 W. N. Craig, Brookline, Mass. 



