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SELECT STOVE CLIMBEES. 



jHE great mass of tropical climbers are dubbed as " rub- 

 bish," and thrown away, because we cannot afford them 

 space and freedom to develop into the things of beauty 

 they are in their own wild woods ; and though compara- 

 tively few are capable of being shown in full perfection 

 dn our stoves, yet we have quite enough of tractable subjects to 

 -depend on a marvellous display of beauty from the roofs of our 

 plant-houses, if we will give them the treatment they require. 



Stephafotis floktbunda is frequently seen in a fair state in 

 pots, but that is not the way to grow it ; and those who do not grow 

 their pot plants as well as our best gardeners exhibit them, may 

 have plants of Stephanotis in pots which will yield but a few flowers, 

 and frequently none at all. The plant wants more room than pots 

 usually afford, and it should be planted out in a nice little bed, 

 which almost every stove will afford a place to make. The best 

 Stephanotis the writer has seen was grown in a rather old-fashioned 

 vinery used for early work, and which had a deep pit in the centre 

 filled with leaves every January, two corners of the pit being cut off 

 by a wall of single bricks ; and in this the plant was planted, the 

 ^shoots being trained thickly to two rods that ran the whole length 

 of the house, and those were literally masses of bloom, more flowers 

 being in the house than could be produced by several dozen plants 

 grown in pots. It may not be so convenient to get so good a place for 

 the roots in every stove. Of course they were warmed by the last- 

 ing leaf heat, but any bed of nice earth in a stove will suffice, and 

 as the surface of the bed or beds will be as useful as any other part 

 of the house for standing pot plants, etc., on, it is all the more 

 desirable to adopt this mode. This is the way, too, the Stephanotis 

 is grown in some of our great London nurseries where a great 

 quantity of the flowers are required. It is generally useless to 

 particularize the soil in which such plants as the Stephanotis will 

 grow ; indeed, it is probably not known in what soil they will not 

 grow, if the other conditions are observed. " Peat and loam," " loam 

 and peat," etc., etc., the everlasting specifics of the compilers of 

 some garden books new and old, will of course grow it, so will any 

 open soil. Usually the watering is a good deal more important than 

 the soil, and the way most people err now-a-days in watering pot 

 plants is by not giving enough. If a plant is well drained, and in a 

 good healthy state, it is hardly possible to kill it with water ; but 

 if, through insufficient watering, two or three inches of the soil 

 of the surface is "wet enough," and, as is frequently the case, the 

 lower half as dry as dust, then comes death and injury such as no 

 over watering could produce. The best way to cure this evil of 

 insufficient watering is to insist that all plants in large pots shall be 

 watered twice when they are watered, and to leave sufficient room 

 when potting for a fair supply of water to be poured on the surface 

 oi the pot. The roots of plants growing naturally may be dry at 

 •the surface ; moisture is sure to be seen in the soil at twelve inches 



