IN our modern American gardens, our latest and strongest aims now seem to be, to gain color, as well as beauty of forms in our plants. Subtropical gardening is exactly adapted to our climate; our brilliant skies and glorious sunny weather, give a possibility and appropriateness to the use of high-colored foliage plants; and, trees of rich hue become mammoth painting on our lawns.and in our flower gardens. In The Garden, a correspondent discussing this subject, says justly, garden scenery is brightened immensely by means of color. " The leaves of the new-born summer, the matured ones of autumn - how much they owe to delicate and multitudinous coloring! But for fresh tenderness of touch, that neither painting nor word-coloring can reproduce, commend us to the bursting buds of,April - the newly unrolled beauty of May leaves. Among these, what more beautiful than the beech and the purple leaved filbert? There are two or more varieties of each, one larger and of more substance than the other. In fact, of the beech there are many varieties, for the red reproduces itself from seed, and in a batch of seedlings there are tints of many degrees, ranging from dull greens to those of almost fiery glow.

We have, however, never yet seen a seedling to equal in brilliancy the common variety, which is mostly increased by grafting it on the common beech; and another with larger leaves, that keeps its color later in the autumn. But purple filberts are easily multiplied by means of suckers - a mode of increase not always to be depended upon in purple beeches on their own roots. Beeches seldom produce suckers, yet they occasionally throw little bunches from the surface roots, and I have seen these green on purple seedlings, and purple on grafted plants - rather a singular circumstance. The, filbert is also so fully purpled over and through that we never remember to have seen it throw out a green sucker. It is most useful in shrubberies, contrasting admirably with such plants as lilacs, laburnums, guelder roses, deutzias, etc. It seems actually to glow with the intensity of its coloring, and is to the fore and middle ground of shrubberies what the taller beech is among other trees. The beach has a soft fluffiness and semi-transparency about it that the filbert, glorious as it is, lacks; and the richest coloring treat - a very feast of glowing magnificence - is spread around every far-reaching purple beech.

One of the best modes of enjoying it to the full is to put the trees between the beholder and the sun, and look through the leaves towards him soon after he has risen, or a few hours before his setting. The purple is thus flooded with golden magnificence, and each leaf and branchlet is set off to admirable advantage. Purple beeches are especially rich as foreground to masses of green oaks, elms, or other deciduous trees; or set against larches, birches, or limes, the light foliage of these or the flowers of service trees, wild crabs, pears, apples, etc., give a deep tone to the glowing purple. Further, the young leaves especially, contrast admirably with most conifers; though it must be admitted that the darker hues of the purple beech in autumn become too sombre accompaniments for most pinuses. The place for the purple beech is the background of shrubberies, home plantations, belts, the park, and even the woods and forests; for the purple beech is not weakened by its color. It grows as fast, and forms timber neither better nor worse than any other beech, and assuredly its more general use would give a glow to forest scenery that would add much to its beauty, and to the breaking of its dead monotony of color as well as form.

Clumps of purple beech here and there would change the face of our landscapes, and render them more agreeable without their being one whit less profitable. What with our want of direct sunshine, and our dripping clouds, and leaden skies, we have often a deficiency of cheering color, and there could hardly be an easier and cheaper method of supplying this want than the planting of our copses with groups of purple leaved filberts, and our woods with purple beeches.