GARDEN & ORCHARD.

Otago Witness, Issue 3513, 12 July 1921, Page 7

GARDEN & ORCHARD.

BY

D. TANNOCK

WORK FOR HIE WEEK. THE GREENHOUSE AND NURSERY. Continue the potting and boxing of the “ budding plants, placing those which are established out into the cool house to make room for seed boxes and newly pricked-out annuals. Make sowings of lobelia, sweet peas, tomatoes, cauliflower, and cabbage , to supply plants for putting out later on. I Prune grape vines, peaches, nectarines, and peaches, when these are grown indoors and any renovations or extensions should be carried out. The vinery borders should receive attention now before root action commences. As a rule with a well-kept vine border all that is necessary is to fork 1 off and remove some of the loose surface soil, taking great care not to damage the roots. Then give a good dressing of i approved vine manure and a mulching of well-rotted cow or stable manure. j Climbers on the roofs cf the greenhouse should be taken down and cleaned, care being taken to unwind all shoots which have become twisted round their supports. Paint any stems which are badly infested with bug with methylated spirits, and tie them up neatly again, spreading them well out over the roof. j Rhubarb and seakalo can be forced by placing covers of hot manure over them where they are growing, but to get a few early stalks it is often desirable to lift a few roots and force them in a warm greenhouse or cellar. Good, well ripened crowns should be selected, the thin roots trimmed off, and then packed fairly close together in large pots or boxes; any 'kind of light soil being suitable. Give one good watering, then invert a pot or box over them and cover with a few old sacks to keep out the light. As the roots are weakened bjforcing, they are not worth keeping afterwards, and are usually thrown away. THE FLOWER GARDEN. Continue to prune rambler roses, trees, end shrubs, end to push on the digging and forking of all beds and borders. THE VEGETABLE GARDEN AND ORCHARD. ! Continue pruning fruit trees and bushes Dig and manure all vacant ground. SPRING FLOWERS ON THE i CONTINENT. Though the season promised to he early at one time, the weather changed suddenly and frost and snow in the middle of April did very considerable damage to all younggrowths. . In Paris the oaks and planes were blackened, and so also at Nancy and Brussels, wh'.le the deciduous azaleas and rhododendrons were considerably damaged at Kew. Gardens in Paris still bear traces of the necessary neglect during the war period, but they are rapidly being got into order, and I am sure that h.v this summer they will have recovered their pre-war brilliancy. Though there were many empty beds and borders, there were also many spring flowers —violas, pansies, wallflowers, and double daisies being used. There were several beds filled with Viola Cornuta, the common purple variety, and they really looked very well and were flowering freely. The yellow viola Bullion was also used extensively, and a little stink garden was filled with these and double daisies" with very satisfactory results. Raised beds were also filled with yellow, blue, and white violas, worked out in a design, and from a distance they were very effective. Wallflowers were massed in beds, both mixed and in separate colours, but they did not strike me as being particularly well grown, and consequently they had to be planted very thickly. The formal style rtf gardening which lias been followed in France, is that of T.e Notre, which lias been carried out on such a grand scale at the Palace of Versailles, where it is after all nothing more than a suitable setting for the palace. The beds on the terraces are all worked out in intricate designs with boxwood edgings and gravel paths; the idea being that they would be seen to advantage from the palace windows. The result mav he all right in the summer when the beds are filled with geraniums, etc., but they are not

attractive in spring, and the standard lilies which are dotted about do not provide much colour. The Versailles type or style has dominated all French landscape gardening,—sometimes with satisfactory results, sometimes not. At first one is apt to admire it, but when one meets it at every turn—always the same formal beds filled with the same formal plants—one longs for the free and open English style of landscape gardening, as seen at Kew, where all sorts of interesting and ornamental trees are used with good eltect. j _ W hat is most remarkable about Paris is toe trees. They are everywhere in abundance, in narrow ‘streets and wide streets, sometimes converting some of the smaller, gardens into woods with a complete leafy canopy overhead, —very nice on a bright, sunny day, but very dull when it is wet. | All sorts of trees seem to thrive, but the .horse chestnut is the most satisfactory. It is extensively planted, and when in flower is distinctly beautiful. One unfortunate feature of the French : trees generally is the way they are muti- ' lated. . They are cut about in a mostfantastic way to form hedges, arches, etc., and they do not seem to mind it, for they come out into leaf as usual and make considerable annual growth, which is promptly cut back the following season. This method of clipping certainly enables the French to have trees in places where they would be . a nuisance if left to grow freely, and no doubt they think that it is better to have : a e'ipped tree than no tree at all. The clipping of shrubs is also carried to a good length, and it is disappointing to find square after square planted with the same clipped box. yew, privet, elderberry. euonymus, and acuba. In Nancy the Public Gardens were more like a forest than a garden;—tali trees with stout stems and a thin leafy canopy overhead. hut sufficient to prevent the growth of grass be’ow. TTence the ground was carpeted with dry leaves. It is quite evij dent that the forester, and not the landI scape gardener, controls the trees and timber production is the aim of all foresters. A little more of this in England and Scoti land, and even in New Zealand, would be | an advantage, and parks, instead of providing knotty, twisted, branchy trees —very j beautiful, no doubt, but of litt-e value—j could produce the straight-stemmed, thin- ! limbed trees, characteristic of the woods | near Nancy and Brussels, of which the citiI zens are justly proud. In the Gardens at Nancy there is an Association football ground, and, like most Scotch and Continental public grounds, it is almost devoid of grass—an indication of how freely it is used, but the boys manage tc play quite well and do not seem to mind it being a little hard when they fall. There is also an open park with flower beds, well filled with mossy phlox, pansies, violas double daisies, tulips, forget-me-nots, and wallflowers. In fact there were no emnty b( ds in the gardens at Nancy, and two noteworthy trees in flower were Pyrus Malms. Florihurda and Magnolia Conspieua. 1 here is a entail rose garden where ramblers are trained in a fantastic fashion hut it struck me that, though roses were evidently I appreciated and fairly well grown, they were nowhere in complete possession, and extensive rose gardens, filled with all the various types, bushes, standards, climbers, ramblers, etc., were unknown. Some day they will discover that the rose is a decorative plant and that it is infinitely more useful than the eternal bedding plants and minus's. In Brussels the beds in the various squares were well filled with spring flowering plants, and tulips were more extensively used than . in France. The Darwin tvne is jj !f , , favourite, and these were most effective | when associated with violas, forget-me-nots, 1 or Cher dwarf plants. ! Horl icull nre ;hhl agricuffuro seem to nnvo tor- .'vnrod from tbo war moro quickly in Holoium Hum in Francs. The fields are « r ili oultivnfed like allofmonia. and Fowinqr and plant in y were in full s wirin', ad sorts of animals Doing yoked into llio ploughs end rad I iva tors. in Thd'cmm T visited the Ghent distriet, whit h is so famous for its nurseries and gardens. where such quantities of Azaleas are grown. They have now almost recovered from the effects of the war, arid

the glass-houses, which were badly damaged bv the bombardments during the last year of the war have been repaired. I went right through the nurseries of M. Van Houtt, who is famous as the raiser of many hardy azaleas, and it is indeed a plant factory on a large scale. TherJ are acres of glass-houses, and these arc tilled with Indian azaleas, Ghent azaleas, Armenia excelsa, palms, aspidistras, araleas, acacias, and many New Zealand and Australian hard-wooded plants. Other houses are filled with tuberous begonias, which are raised by the thousand—in fact, tens of thousands are raised from seed every year —lippeostrums and glorinias; and the tropical houses are filled with droesenos, era tons, caladiums. anthuriums, and ferns. A great block of orchid houses is under construction where the more decorative species will be grown for cut flowers, which are much in demand in Paris and Holland. Before the war the best markets for the Ghent plants were the United States, Germany, and Russia. Now all these markets are closed, but they have still Great Britain and her colonies, France, and Holland, and they do not look at the least as if they were meaning to go out. of business. The Belgian men and women (for they employ lots of women in the nurseries) work shorter hours and receive higher pay than formerly, but still the nurseries round La Pinte, near Ghent, go on expanding, and I see no reason why we in New Zealand should not get from Ghent many of the plants which at present w© get from Japan. Tlie Botanic Garden in Brussels is most interesting, though its beauty is spoiled by grouping all the plants according to the botanical classification. This is certainly advantageous for teaching and for the systematic botanist, blit net so suitable for obtaining lanlsoape effect. The trees, shrubs, and other plants are all carefully labelled, and the whole place is well managed and the plants well grown. There are numerous glass-houses, but these have suffered during the war, and they lost many of their largest specimens of palms and tree-ferns when they could not obtain sufficient fuel to maintain the necessary temperature. One large bouse is devoted to the growth of New Zealand and Australian liard-wooded plants, and on a well-built piece of rockwork they have planted out such things as broadleaf, pittosporum, olearias, veronicas, totara, lancewood. kauri, cabbage tree. etc. In most gardens I found the people anxious to get more of our New Zealand plants, but they are apt to coddle them too much and to keep them in greenhouses when they would be happier outside. Of course, the long sunless winters are very hard on all except deciduous plants, and the frosts, when accompanied by tog, mean death to many plants even when it is possible to provide the necessary temperature. ANSWERS TO CORR.ESTONDENTS. “West Coast.” —To ensure a good crop of rhubarb during the coming season it will be necessary to carry out the following recommendations: —At the present time a liberal dressing of well-rotted manure can bo forked in amongst the plants. In the spring- they can be mulched with stable manure. During the growing season, cut out. any flower stalks as they appear. Remember, rhubarb is one of the grossest feeders of the vegetable garden and objects to the slightest dryness at the roots. Therefore. copious supplies of water should be given during a dry period, and frequent waterings of liquid manure are beneficial. “Podocarpus.”—Seedlings of the black pine (Podocarpus spieatus) are not uncommon in certain favoured localities m the vicinity of mature tvoes, but they are r.ot found in any great quantities in the bush round Dunedin. NEW ZEALAND APPLES. HOItOTIATA SHIPMENT. (From Our Owx Correspondedt.) LONDON, May 17. Just before the Whitsuntide week-end holiday the s.s. Hororata arrived carrying- tho first consignment of this season’s New Zealand apples. Messrs Keeling and Hunt were enterprising enough to get 1100 eases up the river from Tilbury to London on the Friday, and these were disposed of. The remainder, which were got into barges on the same day, cannot be put up to auction until to-morrow (Wednesday). Tho 1100 cases arrived on a market absolutely bare of apples, and good prices were realised. One can speak only of the thousand-odd cases that have already found buyers. The packing, grading, and size seem to please everybody. Dunn’s Favourites have arrived in fairly good order, and the prices for this variety were up to 24s per case, but “bitter pit’’ has clone, considerable damage to tho remaining varieties. The opinion is held, too, that the fruit has been frozen. At this stage, however, it is probably unwise to make further general statements. It will be interesting to see what will be the result of 111© approaching- sale, for the five days in river-barges may have a serious effect on the fruit if the storing has not been satisfactory during the voyage. Cox’s Orange Pippins sold at from 20s to 245, though a few cases in bad order went at from 14s to 16s; Dunn’s Favourites made from 22s to 245, though one let of 17 cases brought 255; Jonathans made from 21s to 225, and other varieties averaged about 225. A few cases of Ribstone available went at 11s, this variety having apparently suffered severely from “bitter pit.”