262 THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



pots), also the invaluable (Enothera Fraseri, which forms a bright 

 green bush, two feet high, and produces fine yellow flowers, which 

 are in perfection in the early part of the day. So we go until we find, 

 in September, Sedum spectabilis (formerly called S.fabaria) ready, and 

 that is followed by pompones, and those by ivies, hollies, skimmias, 

 euonymus, wallflowers (for their lively greenness), junipers, coto- 

 neasters, and a good fifty more fine hardy things that sparkle with 

 green or variegated leaves, or glow with scarlet berries, or give 

 such fine deep shadowy contrasts to the bright things, as Irish yews 

 and Arbor- vitsDS do. We have heard of gay gardens. We propose 

 the formation, by the method here sketched out, of perpetual 

 GAEDEi^fs, and the spots that need them most are assuredly the 

 entrance-courts to private residences, be they great or small. 



S. H. 



PLAGUES OE THE GAEDEN. 



F you were to ask me to concentrate in the fewest possible 

 words the best general advice on the subject of garden 

 vermin, I should just say, " Grow your plants gene- 

 rously, and you'll be little troubled with vermin." It 

 was among ray very earliest observations on the beha- 

 viour of plants, and their aspects under various conditions, that 

 starvation and confinement had much more to do with the production 

 of vermin than dry weather and east winds, and the rest of the 

 agencies that are accredited with the beginnings of plagues. If I 

 go into a close dry house where cobwebs hang in festoons, and the 

 plants are cumbered with yellow leaves which betray that they often 

 want water and do not get it, I know that I shall find plenty of 

 vermin, and I am never mistaken. Indeed, I take it to be a primary 

 rule for gardeners of all classes that the best way to scare away 

 vermin is to promote a healthy, vigorous growth of the plants that 

 are infested, and if this is not done, the most potent nostrums in the 

 world are next to wasted, and with them all the time and money 

 expended in applying them. Take a few cases. Here are two 

 useful plants, Solanum capsicastrum and Solanum pseudo-capsicum. 

 They will grow in any kind of soil, and almost in any position, but 

 then how do they differ in their looks according as you treat them 

 ill or well. Keep them in the house all the summer, and you have 

 long-legged plants always filthy with fly, and though they will pro- 

 bably bear abundance of berries, those berries will fall as fast as 

 they ripen, and the end will be a grim disappointment. But alter 

 the case, put the plants out in the month of May in a plunge-bed, 

 shift them as they fill their pots with roots till they are in pots of 

 eight inches diameter, and then stop ; give plenty of water as re- 

 quired, and you will never see a single fly on either of them, but you 

 will see berries in abundance ; and when these are ripe it will be 

 just the time to house them again, both to save them from frost and 

 to render them useful for purposes of decoration. This case may be 

 taken as the type of thousands. Green-fly, thrip, red spider — these 



