Jardin des Tuileries

“ LETTER X. GARDEN OF THE TUILERIES—FASHIONABLE DRIVES—FRENCH OMNIBUSES—CHEAP RIDING—SIGHTS—STREET-BEGGARS—IMPOSTORS, ETC.
The garden of the Tuileries is an idle man's paradise. Magnificent as it is in extent, sculptures, and cultivation, we all know that statues may be too dumb, gravel walks too long and level, and trees and flowers and fountains a little too Platonic, with any degree of beauty. But the Tuileries are peopled at all hours of sunshine with, to me, the most lovely objects in the world—children. ”

“ It was indeed a pleasant place to them, that overgrown old garden; for no gardener looked askance when they dug holes in the gravel paths, or turned the rockery into a grotto large enough to get into themselves and play at elves and witches and mermaids and other delightful games; and no one said them nay when they built a hut upon the lawn—with willow branches and rushes from beside the pond—where they "camped out" many a long summer afternoon, pretending to be gipsies, or soldiers, or Ancient Britons, whichever their fancy pleased. ”

“ Of course those who grow the English florist's Tulip ought to continue to grow them in beds and in lines, so that they can be protected from frost and shaded readily from strong sunshine. For ordinary gardens, however, an informal grouping will be the most satisfactory and pleasing. The species are very varied in their character, and many of the dwarfer are delightful rock-garden plants. A good, loamy soil is suitable for all classes of Tulips, but where it is heavy a little coarse sand may be placed about the bulb. ”

“ The poor rooks dropped on our own land on the grass under their nests. Several of their young must have perished miserably, and the deserted nests look very sad. Still we think enough young remain to save the rookery. The Florentine yellow Tulips are in bloom. How far more lovely to the unhorticultural eye are these wild kinds, with their graceful bending stalks, than those the Tulip’s cultivation has so well succeeded in stiffening—with all their grand colour! ”

“ A formal garden may be made to look as ugly as anything in Holland when the tulips are in bloom—five hundred tulips in a bed, all at the same distance from each other, and all of the same colour and size. ”

“ The culture of the tulip, as a florist’s flower, requires unremitting attention and care; but for common garden purposes, the tulip will be found hardier, and less liable to injury from insects, &c., than most other flowers. Where tulips are grown in a regular bed, the ground should be dug out to the depth of twenty inches, or two feet. ”

“ The foliage of the tulip tree is, in truth, one of its principal points of beauty, and is inferior only to the stateliness of its form. The opening leaf-buds are conical, exquisitely modeled, and of the tenderest green. The leaves unfold from them much as do the petals in a flower, but quickly spread apart on the stem. As they grow larger they still preserve their light-green color, but take on a mild gloss. They are ready to shift and tremble on their long leaf-stalks in every breath of wind, which gives them a decided air of cheerfulness. ”

“ I had meant to wait till we were in the Garden of the Tuileries, but we had stopped to look at the river, and I can see it all now, the barge folk's washing hanging out to bleach, and a woman knitting among the geraniums on a deck. There was a little fishing-tackle shop, I remember, called 'Au Bon Pêcheur,' and a poodle and a Persian cat were basking together on the doorstep. Our hands just touched, because of the people passing; and then we went on to the Tuileries, and talked. ”

“ In street planting, and along roadsides, nothing could be finer than the tulip-tree, which grows rapidly, is clean, and bears fine blossoms in early summer. They should be transplanted when small, as they easily die off if moved when large. ”

“ A visit to the Jardin des Plantes will complete the illusion to the most critical eye: and the lovers of romance may fancy themselves at once in Juan Fernandez, or in the Isle of France, as they walk in the open air, under the shade of palm-trees, and seeing tea, coffee, guava fruit, and a hundred other exotic luxuries, growing in their natural state. This establishment, which we visited in the course of the day, appears a favourite walk of the inhabitants of Toulon, and is conducted in a manner which reflects the highest credit on their taste and liberality. ”

“ It is a level wood of small trees, covering a mile or two square, and cut from corner to corner with straight roads for driving. The soil is sandy, and the grass grows only in tufts, the walks are rough, and either muddy or dusty always; and, barring the equipages and the pleasure of a word in passing an acquaintance, I find a drive to this famous wood rather a dull business. I want either one thing or the other—cultivated grounds like the Tuileries, or the wild wood. ”

“ Even when seedling tulips do flower, they produce only self-coloured flowers, for the first two or three years, and in this state they are called breeders. To make them break, that is, produce the brilliant and distinct colours which constitute the beauty of a florist’s tulip, they are subjected to the most sudden and violent changes of soil, climate, and management. At one time, they are grown in poor soil, and only allowed enough water to keep them living ”

“ He has splendid flower gardens, too, and plants them well out upon the wayside for all men to enjoy. Long may it be before his soul is required of him.
By this time I was in the very prettiest of the red-farm woods. Hermit thrushes were there, also, standing upright in the middle of the road, and in the forest hylas were peeping, one of them a real champion for the loudness of his tone. How full of glory the place was, with the sunlight sifting through the bright leaves and flickering upon the shining birch trunks! If I were an artist, I think I would paint wood interiors. ”

“ Just north of the brick wall of the flower garden are two magnificent tulip trees towering in their stately grandeur far above their companions; filling their branches with a wealth of creamy bell-shaped blossoms which like innumerable swinging censers scatter delicious incense on the passing breeze. The master of those beautiful and spacious grounds has long since departed; but when we gaze upon those magnificent trees planted by his hands we seem to catch the spirit of the man whispered by all their green leaves, melodies clearer and sweeter than any music we had heard before. ”

“ Tulips furnish one of the principal ornaments of the garden: they are propagated by planting offsets from the bulbous roots, in common garden soil, either in autumn, or towards the end of December, according to their early or late periods of flowering; and, if such soil be changed every year, new varieties, both of single and double tulips, beautifully diversified with various colours, may easily be obtained: these plants require only to be sheltered, during the severity of winter; to be kept clear of weeds ”

“ C. L. Allen, to whom I am indebted for the above facts, more than seven hundred acres of Dutch soil are devoted to Tulip culture.
Tulips have been grown from the seed by the millions. The named varieties are so great that it would be impossible to enumerate. One dealer alone boasts of more than eighteen hundred varieties.
The seed bed's important part it is to furnish fresh plants to take the place of such perennials and biennials as are winter-killed or have outlived their flowering time. ”

“ The Darwin tulips yield beautiful shades of violet, carmine, scarlet, and brown; the bizarres, many curious effects in stripes and flakes; the rose and white, delicate frettings and margins of pink on a white ground; but the parrots have petals fringed, twisted, beaked, poised curiously upon the stalks, splashed with reds, yellows, and green, and to come suddenly upon a mass of them in the garden is to think for a brief moment that a group of unknown birds blown from the tropics in a forced migration have alighted for rest upon the bending tulip stalks. ”

“ In the place where the orange-peel falleth, there shall it lie.
The mill, as I said, is now the centre of an orange grove. There must be hundreds of trees. All of them are small, but the greater part are already dead, and the rest are dying. Those nearest the walls are fullest of leaves, as if the walls somehow gave them protection. The forest is creeping into the inclosure. Here and there the graceful palm-like tassel of a young long-leaved pine rises above the tall winter-killed grass. It is not the worst thing about the world that it tends to run wild. ”

“ The "Cottage Garden" Tulips grow yearly in favour, and they deserve it because of their beauty and their general hardiness, which enables the greater number to be permanent border flowers. There are a great many of much beauty, and a brief selection is necessarily incomplete. It includes the curious acuminata, Didieri, elegans, Faerie Queen, flava, Gala Beauty, gesneriana, Golden Beauty, Golden Crown, ixioides, macrospila, maculata, Picotee, retroflexa, sylvestris major, vitellina, and York and Lancaster. ”

“ Flowers in the front yard, vines clinging about the porch, bright pictures on the wall, ferns and grasses in the vase over the mantel, a climbing rose, perhaps, to race for the cone of the house and to throw out its crimson colors from the roof. Toil which one loves will be freely spent on garden and field, for the toiler is working for those he loves best. ”

“ In the garden of the Cabot house on Essex Street, the first owner of the house imported tulips from Holland, and, during the time of their blossoming, threw open the garden to friends. The later owners improved the garden by adding rare specimens of peonies and other plants, and have kept the same effects, adding to the gardens' beauty each year.
While the old-fashioned garden has gone into decline, yet the modern-day enthusiast has brought into his formal gardens the flowers of yesterday. ”

“ Culture in the Open Ground.—For general usefulness the early Tulips are the most valuable of all, because of their peculiarly accommodating nature, their many and brilliant colours, and their suitability for the formation of rich masses in the flower garden. Any good soil will suit them, and they may be planted in quantities under trees if the position enjoys some amount of sunshine, because they will have finished their growth before the leafage of the trees shades them injuriously. ”

“ The buds are peculiar in structure. Each leaf within the bud is protected by a pair of stipules, and in the spring, when the buds open, a leaf slowly uncurls from its two folded stipule coverings and another bud is seen beneath, wrapped in stipules. This bud unfolds and in its turn discloses another. The process is as fascinating to watch as the opening of Indian boxes one within another. This characteristic of the tulip tree in protecting its young leaves makes one associate a very human, maternal instinct with the tree; it seems of all others the most careful in protecting its young growth. ”

“ Mr. Van Der Lann was carrying a load of potted107 plants to the estate. The children had never seen so many beautiful tulips.
“It will be fun riding with the flowers!” cried Vevi. “I want to sit beside the Golden Beauty.”
The choice tulip, however, was not among the other potted plants in the back of the truck. Vevi was very worried about it until she discovered that the nurseryman was carrying his best tulips in a special box on the front seat.
At the Langley estate dozens of gardeners were hard at work preparing the grounds for the coming affair. ”

“ In the first place very good and perfectly reliable information is obtained from the catalogue of any reputable seed house. The girls found out that certain bulbs are better adapted to outside planting, while others do equally well indoors or out. Take tulips first; these are suited to the outdoor conditions. To be sure the florist, whose business it is to raise them inside does so with great success. But boys and girls are more likely to have trouble with inside planting of tulips than of other bulbs. ”

“ Behind the house a wide yard with nettles, wormwood, and burdocks in the corners, outbuildings with doors that stick, doves and rooks on the thatched roofs, a little storehouse with a rusty weathercock, two or three birch-trees with rooks' nests in their bare top branches, and beyond—the road with cushions of soft dust in the ruts and a field and the long hurdles of the hemp patches, and the grey little huts of the village, and the cackle of geese in the far-away rich meadows. ”

“ Here he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree.
In youth, the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron Tulipiferum, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculiarly smooth, and often rises to a great height without lateral branches; but, in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, while many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the present case, lay more in semblance than in reality. ”

“ The tulips are in flower, and the long narrow beds which, with scant space between, fill the entire middle of the garden, are ablaze with the glory of their bloom. Queenly flowers they are and tall, each one with a gentle pedigree—for nothing common or unknown has entrance here—and crimson, white, and yellow—the velvet petals of some almost black—striped with rare and exquisite markings, they raise to the sun their large chaste chalices. The perfection of shape is theirs, as they rise from the midst of their green, lance-like leaves ”