297 



Hill Gardens. 



The following Report is by Mr. fm. Harris, Superintendent : — 

 Roads. — The main roads through the property were cleaned and kept 

 in fair order. 



Fences. — Necessary repairs were attended to, and the fences kept in 

 good order. The Nursery was made secure by a substantial barbed 

 wire fence. 



Pastures.— These were billed and cleaned as usual during the year. 



Garden. — The borders were thoroughly overhauled, trenched, man- 

 ured, and the plants re-arranged. This became necessary through 

 overcrowding, and through many of the specimens having become 

 altogether too large for border plants. A large number of tree 

 ferns were brought in and planted in the Arboretum. The walk 

 through the Arboretum was re-made, considerably widened, and 

 generally improved. The usual garden work, e.g. forking, manuring, 

 weeding- and raking, cutting grass, etc. was attended to as usual. 



Nursery. — The propagation of garden plants has been attended to, 

 and a stock sufficient to meet requirements has been kept on hand. 



Blue Mountain Coffee. — Considerable difficulty is often experienced 

 by Coffee planters in obtaining supplies of young coffee plants for 

 supplying vacancies, or for planting up new land. To assist in this 

 matter a quantity of the best Blue Mountain Coffee was procured for 

 seed, and was sown. The plants, about 25,000 in number, were duly 

 pricked out in prepared beds and they have made fair progress. The 

 very dry weather experienced during the last three months of the 

 official year affected them considerably, but they were shaded with 

 fern fronds and are again looking well. Naturally, growth at this 

 altitude (4,900 feet) is not so fast as it would be at a lower elevation, 

 but it is thought that the plants will be hardier, and better suited for 

 exposed situations than those raised at a lower altitude. 



Orris Root. In the Annual Report for 1894 mention is made that 

 seeds of Iris florentina and I. germanica were imported and sown. 

 The plants raised are all apparently forms of the latter species. As 

 expected they have grown luxuriantly, and during the latter part of 

 the year under review many of them were lifted, the rhizomes cut off 

 and the heads replanted. 



For information on Orris-root see Bulletin for January 1896. 



Orange Garden at Resource. 



Resource is a property of 162 acres situated on the southern slopes 

 of the Bl .e Mountains, about 9 miles from Gordon Town, and ranging 

 in elevation from 3,400 feet to 4,000 feet. Parochial roads intersect 

 the property, and as it is within half an hour's ride of Cinchona it 

 has been placed under the Superintendent of that Establishment. 

 As might be expected, an old property which had been out of culti- 

 vation for over a quarter of a century, save a few patches of provision 

 ground worked by tenants and squatters, required a great deal of 

 heavy work to restore it to something like order. There were no 

 roads, no fences, and rank bush and large mango trees of useless sorts 

 grew everywhere filling the land with roots and impoverishing the 

 soil. These had to be renewed, the ground thoroughly dug up and 

 immense quantities of roots and stones cleared away. 



