332 
THE FLORIST. 
season have gladdened onr hearts and enriched our homes with the 
glowing colours of a tropical climate for some months. 
Britain, or London rather, can barely hold her own in the com¬ 
petition for decorative gardening with Imperial Paris, whose 
squares, gardens, and boulevards have immense pains—and we 
should say immense sums—expended on them to make them attrac¬ 
tive, and a great success they are. I have only had time to walk 
through Hyde Park and the Kensington Gardens since my return ; 
the former, though greatly in advance of former years, is much 
behind the artistic arrangements of the Parisian gardens; the 
space between the two walks appears to want more of such things 
as tree box, hollies, yews, cypresses, junipers, and pillyreas, as 
well as vases, &c., to relieve the flowers in summer, and to give 
expression to the scenery in their absence. We should also like 
to see some of the bare earth in front of the shrubbery covered 
Avith ivy, periwinkles, or St. John’s wort. We presume the 
above would stand the London atmosphere, with its sooty impreg¬ 
nation, or what is to become of the rare trees in the new gardens 
at Kensington, when every available yard round the area becomes 
built upon, which Avill soon be the case, and when it will be worse 
for trees in this respect than Hyde Park is at the present time. 
I notice your contemporary, the Chronicle, has an article on 
the trees of Paris, which I frequently examined when staying 
there. In my opinion the early ripening of the foliage arises 
simply from drought, and neglecting to renew the soil sufficiently 
when planting new ones, by which the growth is arrested early in 
the season ; the soil in which the trees grow, from its being so 
constantly walked over, prevents the rain from penetrating to 
their roots; all the rain which falls on the surface should, there¬ 
fore, be contrived so as to pass to the roots, and not run off to 
the water channels. I would also arrange a series of two-inch 
pipes, with outlets at short intervals, just beneath the surface, 
which I would connect with the water mains, and charge them 
frequently in dry weather sufficiently to saturate the soil about the 
roots, when I have no doubt the foliage would continue green much 
longer, and the trees grow more vigorously; besides, I believe a 
much greater variety might be grown by so doing than now. The 
underground pipes Avould also water the trees without incommoding 
the paths for pedestrians. 
I see the Saturday Review is again dealing hard blows at the 
Exhibition building, the hideousness of Avhich, it states, becomes 
more apparent as it progresses towards completion. It is so far a 
pity that its proximity to the new Horticultural Gardens gives it 
the appearance of enveloping their best frontage with a pall of 
deformity; it is somewhat lucky, how’ever, for the Poyal Society 
of Gardeners, that they haA^e retained ChisAvick, for as aa^c know 
not how soon they may be forced out of Kensington, either by the 
smoke, or the veto of the Royal Commissioners, tliey may again 
require it for their head-quarters, and, probably, last resting-place. 
G. F. 
