and “cornered.” Naturally people seeing such 
things in books,feel justified in “carrying them 
out,” mostly with dismal effect. The trouble 
of keeping such beds in order is great, and 
they produce very little. They are generally 
so small and so “fioniking” that one can 
neither trench nor dig nor attend to them with 
any convenience. Apart from this there is 
no effect worth speaking of to be got out of 
the small bed. The only case in which they 
are tolerable is when they occur at the base 
of standard roses, and even then they have a 
poor and dotty effect, and would in 
most cases be better abolished. If peo¬ 
ple make a great number of small beds 
they must break up the surface of lawn 
or flower-garden to a needless degree, 
creating a number of points which vex 
the eye without satisfying it. The true 
way is to turf up such beds and to form 
large beds, circular or oval, thoroughly 
well prepared in positions where they 
will not mar the breadth or beauty of 
the lawn or turfed part of the garden, and 
mostly there should be only one bed or a f 
group in a place. These should be quite cut 
off from tree roots near-by a deep trench, I 
where that were necessary, and thoroughly 
well prepared. In such beds it would be 
possible to get a really good result with 
anything we have to deal with from Clove 
Carnations to roses or lilies or Irises mixed, 
this being a charging combination for a large 
oval bed in a quiet corner. Three to five bold 
beds together with sufficient grass between, 
make a good group for roses or any important 
series of plants. 
The Shrubberies of the Future.— In no 
department of a garden is a decided change 
more needed than in the formation of shrub¬ 
beries. Every place of a few years' standing 
has its mixed shrubberies planted so thickly 
that but a few years suffice to kill all that is 
in any way tender or rare in them, and the | 
although in the case of suburban villas the 
longing for privacy may account for the 
masses of shrubs that are generally seen 
packed together about their boundaries, that 
cannot apply to country-houses surrounded 
by their own lands. When alterations with 
regard to such thickets are decided on the full 
evil of overcrowding becomes ai'pareut. Not 
a tree or shrub in them is capable of bearing 
inspection, all the undergrowth being killed 
from lack of light and air. The only remedy 
left is to cut them nearly level with the 
ground and start afresh. This is the usual 
plan in the case of plantations of laurel, and 
very bare and blemished it makes gardens 
look until they get furnished with young 
growth again, whereas, if judicious thinning 
and pruning bad been duly attended to, such 
severe cutting back need never be resorted to. 
Avoid in the case of the shrubs all formal 
mixing or regular dotting; on the contrary, 
try grouping of families or classes; heve the 
hollies, the magnolias, the lilacs, syringas, 
deutzias, rhododendrons, azaleas, daphnes, 
and the endless variety of evergreen or decid¬ 
uous plants ! o that one can get among them 
to inspect them all round. Add yuccas, 
hardy palms, and aralias to the shrubbery, in 
which there will be plenty of sheltered nooks 
where dwarfer plants of doubtful hardiness 
can nestle under the shelter of their loftier 
neighbors. For instance, bulbs of lilies and 
gladioli may be under the friendly shelter of 
this goes on in proportion to the desire of 
people for short-cuts, we shall soon have a 
time when each park will be like a gridiron 
with walks, and many of them needless 
walks. The right way would be to lay 
down certain essential lines of walk and ad¬ 
here to them, placing these linos where they 
would do least harm and allow of the largest 
expanse of verdure. People often walk on 
the green part in hot weather for the =ake 
of comfort, and the existence of a small path¬ 
way does not always imply that a large walk 
is wanted there. It would ho often better to 
allow the public to beat a path for a shoit 
time than to give way and make one of those 
iron hound walks. The greatest mistake of 
all is letting two walks be near each other. 
Parks are not made for short-cuts, and there 
can bo no hardship in having to make a little 
detour to get from one point to the other if 
by so doing the beauty of the place is main¬ 
tained or improved; and as the park or pub¬ 
lic garden is spoilt where there is someexcuse 
for the course taken, so the private garden, 
w ithout any real excuse is often marred and 
spoiled by needless, costly and often absurd 
walks. There are kitchen gardens in Eng¬ 
land where as much good ground is covered 
by walks as would grow vegetables for half-a- 
dozen families. In America you do not, I 
think, work the kitchen-garden in this way, 
and I have seen capital plans of setting the 
plow to work which, it is to be hoped, are 
carried out, but in your flower-gardoning and 
landscape work you have the same gyrations 
and excess of gravel, etc. There is nothing 
gives me more pleasure than the fact that I 
have been instrumental in abolishing many a 
score miles of walks in our gardens of late years. 
Let the coming men carry the war on 1 One 
has only in visiting gardens to consider, while 
the picture is before the eye, how much harm 
is done by them to be quickly determined to 
reduce them to tbe limit of necessity—in 
which case only are they beautiful and useful. 
Tbe Pekn-To (Cross-section.)—See Page 566.— Fig.— 272. 
the intrusion of the architect and the builder 
is the moi carmful, making terraces where 
they are not w anted in defiance of level, and 
even comfort. The terraced garden is only * 
really right where the house is built on steep 
ground, and where the terrace isthe only way 
of getting levels for cultivation, just the same 
as occur in many cities aud other parts of 
Italy where the steep nature of the hill tops 
generally selected for the houses, absolutely 
ne cessitates the terracenot only for the garden 
but for the cultivation of olives or wheat. It 
was then so natural and so right to make a 
rude cultivator’s terrace into an ornamental 
one and garland it. with plants, which was all 
one could desire. But carrying out the 
same idea, or trying to do so, on level ground, 
and very often cutting off the foreground 
view in doing so, is an absurdity, as may be 
seen by all who think the matter over and 
look into things in the gardening way. Thi3 
is what we added to the builder’s note who 
proposed to reform our rock-gardens with his 
“blocks:” “Mr. -makes excellent con¬ 
crete, and is now coloriug it admirably, but 
we hope he will let rocks alone. We have 
too much of the builder in the garden already 
and the architect, too. We might well pray 
to be delivered from both, and they noed not 
regret this, considering the enormous amount 
of work they have to do to make our most¬ 
ly wretched houses habitable, if not beauti¬ 
ful. D cent houses first, and cottages and 
farm-houses by all means. We all know what 
London and London suburbs are, and we have 
walked for days in country places without 
seeing a really sound and not ugly house or 
cottage. The house j of England will have to 
1)9 rebuilt for the most part, and great as Mr. 
- is as a builder, we require all his efforts 
in this direction.” 
-•-*-* - — 
The postage on the. Free Seed Distribution 
will be not less than right or ten cents. Of 
this each subscriber is required to ~iay six 
- ?:■'■ 
Hambeltonian Stallion, Enchanter.—See Page 567.— Fig. 273. 
strongest privet growers get the field to them¬ 
selves. Tbe aucuba, laurel, and a few others 
overpower their weaker neighbors as surely 
as a beech-tree will monopolize all the food 
within its reach, and eventually remain mas¬ 
ter of the situation. Look at a bush of lilac, 
laburnum, or Bsrberis Darwinii, laurus- 
tinus, or any other that has been luckily 
planted as a single specimen, or in a group on 
the grass, with sun and air playing around 
them; compare them with duplicates of the 
same in the choked-up shrubbery, uud note 
the result of overcrowding and starvation. 
The question is, what can be best done to 
remedy an evil that all lovers of a garden 
must deplore ? Why have impenetrable screens 
at all where there is nothing to hide t For, 
a spreading rhododendron, or a group of 
cyclamens under the shelter of the Fan Palm. 
But let us avoid repetition, as the churm of a 
garden is its distinctiveness, aud nothing 
creates such a feeling of monotony as dreary 
shrubberies, nearly all alike. Anything is 
better than the stereotyped mixture that has 
so long held sway. There are endless varieties 
of beautiful flowering shrubs that one seldom 
finds beyond nursery rows or in pots for deco¬ 
ration. 
Too Many Walks. —The walks in our 
public parks, while becoming more numer¬ 
ous every day, are also in some places much 
too wide and conspicuous. Some of the nicest 
bits of turf in the public parks have of late 
years been cut up by bold, hard walks. If 
Architecture and Stone-work in the 
Garden.— Only yesterday a celebrated Lon¬ 
don builder wrote and told us that he was 
prepared to make rock-work in blocks at so 
much a foot square! You can imagine how 
well we like this proposal. We have had a 
good deal too much of architects and builders 
in gardens. Wo have a rare example in the 
Central Park near you, where a geometrical 
and terraced garden was stuck in the middle 
of a great park, being almost as out of place 
oh a butcher-shop would be there. So again you 
have those needless bridges to keep the pedes¬ 
trians away from the equestrians, etc., where¬ 
as in the parks of London and Paris, which 
are much more crowded, we avoid that ab¬ 
surdity. But it is in the private garden where 
cents. That is, tie must inclose two three- 
cent stamps in his letter of application. 
MULBERRIES AND SILK-WORMS. 
THOMAS MEEHAN. 
Ed. Gardeners' Monthly—Author of the 
Native Flowers and Ferns of the United 
States, etc . 
MUCH attention is being given just now to 
silk culture. There is every prospect of suc¬ 
cess. But we should profit by the errors of 
the past. Bilk culture would have been a 
great success fifty years ago but for the use 
of the Morns mnlticaulis. Every one knows 
