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PLANTS ADAPTED POR THE PLUNGINa SYSTEM. 



SHALL endeavour now to redeem my prnmi!«e of pre- 

 senting to the readers of the Floral World a cata- 

 logue of the plants employed in the plunging system at 

 Stoke Newington during the past ten years. I shall 

 premise that the reader understands what is meant by 

 the term " plunging," and is familiar with what has been already 

 written on the subject. I must further premise that whatever will 

 suit the taste of the cultivator at the moment of arranging a display 

 may be used, provided there is no danger of injury by exposure to 

 the weather. Thus, if at the present time I had a house full of 

 show pelargoniums in flower, 1 might turn them out and arrange 

 them in beds, plunged in cocoa-nut fibre, and I should have a bril- 

 liant effect at once. The plants would not be injured, and they 

 would probably continue to present a gay appearance for about a 

 month (this depending on the length of time they had been bloom- 

 ing before being put to this purpose), and would then need to be 

 housed again, and their places supplied with other plants. We make 

 many changes, and use all sorts of things. Ouce this season I had 

 a fine bed of ferns, with a few elegant flowering plants intermixed, 

 and the efiect was delightful. Lastly, in respect of these prelimi- 

 naries, it must be remembered that the display is made in an en- 

 trance-court expressly prepared for it, the borders consisting of 

 cocoa-nut fibre for plunging, having good backgrounds of hollies and 

 other evergreen shrubs, and supported in front with beautiful 

 mouldings in Ransome's Patent Stone. That all the plants are 

 grown in pots is, of course, superfluous infoi'mation ; but it cannot 

 be superfluous to remark that they are j^rown somewhat difl'ereutly 

 to the style which would be best for any other display. Por ex- 

 ample, a considerable proportion of the geraniums are never pruned 

 at all. The consequence is, we can make up beds of geraniums of 

 any height we please, but usually plants of three to four feet are 

 most valued, and our giants were not long since intentionally de- 

 stroyed, because of the trouble occasioned in wintering them. On 

 the loth of May we had a bed of geraniums in full bloom, and of 

 all colours intermixed ; the group rose from plants of Christine a 

 foot high at the edge, to plants of Hibberd's Pet, Stella, Purple 

 Nosegay, Pink Beauty, and Galanthiflora, four feet high in the 

 centre — a magnificent spectacle, a month at least in advance of the 

 planting of bedders in the ordinary way ; and as to the display of 

 flowers, a gain of two months certainly ; and then no ordinary bed, 

 with its flat, uniform colouring, could compete with this grand cone 

 of mixed colours. As geraniums have obtained mention, we 

 may as well begin with them. 



ZoNALE Geeai^iums are the most useful of all the plants that 

 have been incorporated in our system. There is just one particular 

 reason, too, why we make a display with these in a manner probably 

 never seen before, and it is that we turn to account the whole of 

 our seedlings, except such few as are selected for other and more 



