374 
THE FLORIST. 
the Chrysanthemums give to our town and village gardens at this 
season! Their showiness and comparative hardiness should induce a more 
general growth of them as an out-door plant, selecting a good proportion 
of warm-tinted colours for harmonising with out-door vegetation at this 
season. By-the bye, let me recommend to those of your readers who 
have not yet planted it; Skimmia japonica, sent by Mr. Fortune from 
China. This is an evergreen shrub, with bright glossy foliage, and 
terminal clusters of scarlet berries, more beautiful even than our own 
native Holly. When once the Skimmia attains a moderate size, the 
appearance of it through the winter, covered with its coral berries, is 
very striking; and, unlike our Holly, young plants of this produce 
berries in great profusion. Another introduction by the same gentle¬ 
man is equally valuable ; I allude to the Berberis (Mahonia) japonica, 
an evergreen with remarkably fine foliage, and producing long racemes 
of rich purple berries. Of recent importations in the way of shrubs, 
these two are decidedly the finest. 
I read the other day, in a recent number of the Builder^ an article 
entitled “ Art in our Parks,” wherein the question of Art, as applied 
to the improvement of the London Parks, is considered and commented 
on in a style not over complimentary to the powers at Whitehall Place. 
The writer has my best wishes for giving prominency to his opinions, 
for certainly the Metropolitan Parks and Squares confer no credit on 
the Board of Works. To show these remarks are not unfounded, let 
any gentleman with an ordinary amount of taste or knowledge of land¬ 
scape gardening go to Battersea Park, yet unfinished—or to Victoria 
Park, which is—and he can judge for himself how miserably Art has 
been represented at both places; and when we consider the sums 
lavished on these parks, which have been enormous, surely something 
more worthy of national taste could have been achieved. The older 
London parks are open to the same objections ; for whenever alterations 
are made, either to the boundary or interior, we get the ever-recurring 
iron palisading and accompanying belt of mixed trees and shrubs; and 
as illustrating the manner in which this latter work is performed—we 
presume under directions from the office—those of your readers who 
reside in London may remember the new planting near the Marble 
Arch in Hyde Park, in which we should say, from the appearance of 
the dead trees we saw in passing by, the failures amounted to fully one- 
half of those planted. Would that John Loudon were living, to speak 
out on these discreditable proceedings. 
Independent of the mere carrying out or execution, there seems a 
want of comprehensiveness and unity in every improvement undertaken 
by the Board of Works in the public parks, which savours more of the 
^'‘fortuitous combination of atoms f than the development of a principle 
which would add grandeur to the metropolitan parks and squares by 
architectural embellishments and connecting them with surrounding 
objects. Why—as the writer observes—cannot architecture be made 
to blend in various gradations with the turf and trees of our parks and 
squares, to which it would impart a character, and fill up a void at 
present sensibly felt ? And as the difficulty of cultivating flowers and 
flowering shrubs becomes every year greater in and near London, let 
