THE FLORAL WOELD AND GAEDEN GUIDE. 259 



flowers occur without the aid of the plunging system. But in the 

 plunge garden the displays in those three months should be actually 

 more beautiful than in any other three mouths of the year, and 

 they certainly have been so at Stoke Newington, for our grandest 

 cisplays of geraniums, gladioli, roses, lilies, and whatever else may 

 be employed in the summer and autumn, are unequal in beauty and 

 freshness to our bright masses of crocuses, hyacinths, tulips, 

 polyanthuses, candytufts, and alyssums, succeeding each other as 

 they do rapidly, and at some points all meeting, as happened at the 

 moment when this sketch was made. The long border was then 

 surfaced with large alternate patches of white candytuft {Iheris 

 saxatile) and yellow alyssum (^Alyssum saxatile), with tulips between 

 them, and in the centre stone bed hyacinths, crown imperials, tulips, 

 and crocuses were associated. There is yet one more advantage, 

 and that is that it affords an almost unlimited 7'ange for the selection 

 of subjects. The range for selecting plants for planting out is limited, 

 but here we are free to adopt whatever can be grown in a pot, and 

 may be put out of doors for a time without serious injury. I will 

 here contrast two beds, both of them in the same garden, and the 

 property of the writer of this. One is filled with Japanese lilies, tri- 

 tomas, gladioli, tall varieties of Lobelias of the " cardinalis" section, 

 with a few tufts of that fine tall blue grass, M)jmus rjlauca, and edged 

 with small plants of hydrangeas without flowers for the sake of a 

 bright green band, to aflbrd a decided contrast to stone and gravel. 

 It is one of the loveliest beds ever seen, the blue grass and the dark 

 swordlike leaves of the tritomas make a most curious and delicate 

 groundwork for the many splendid flowers that glow above it or 

 shine through it. The other bed is planted with the same sub- 

 jects, with the exception solely that it is edged with geraniums, 

 which are in a bright and satisfactory state ; but the gladioli, the 

 lilies, and the tritomas are not much better now than dried straws 

 and rnshes, for the heat forced them into bloom prematurely, and 

 the drought killed them ofi" the ground, the appearance of the bed 

 now being most unsightly. It may be asked how it is that the 

 plunge plants did not sufter in the same way. To which the answer 

 is simply this, that being all in pots they were kept near the shade 

 of large trees, plunged in a cool bed of rotten moss and leaves, and 

 well supplied with water until they were in fit condition for the 

 display, and they surpass by many degrees all specimens of the 

 same varieties of plants grown in. the same way in previous seasons, 

 the extra care we were compelled to give them on account of 

 the excessive heat having (doubtless aided by the heat) resulted in 

 increased vigour of growth and bloom. Tlie few failures we have 

 had in working out the system have been as convincing of its virtue 

 as our best successes. Tailures will occur in bedding even with the 

 ablest hands, but before they are known to be failures, weeks or 

 months have elapsed, and it is next to impossible to remedy them. 

 In the plunging system failure is next to impossible as re.^pects the 

 display, because if one batch of plants goes wrong, and does not 

 flower well when it ought to, there will be found something else to 

 take its place ; for it is one of the conditions of success that the 



