1869.] THE CHILDREN'S GARDEN. 251 



-plant is a beautiful object every year during the months of August and September, 

 when it is covered with large bunches of its orange-coloured, trumpet-shaped 

 flowers. 



The Bignonia radicans is a free and rapid grower, and when encouraged will 

 spread to a great distance, and rise to a great height, in a few years. It is well 

 adapted for covering unsightly buildings. It is freely propagated by cuttings or 

 layers. Old plants also throw up suckers from the roots, which may be taken 

 off and planted at once where they are wanted. When established, the only 

 attention they require is in the autumn or winter to cut away all the small, weak 

 shoots of the former year, and shorten the strong, leading ones to two or three feet. 

 When the plant has filled the space required, all that is then necessary is, after 

 the fall of the leaves, to spur-prune like a vine. It is surprising that this fine 

 old plant, which will stand our severest winters in the open air against a wall 

 without the slightest injury, should now be so little grown. No garden should 

 be without it. 



Stourton. M. Saul. 



THE CHILDKEN'S GAKDEN. 



[T the Manchester meeting of the Eoyal Horticultural Society, Mr. W. E. 

 Eendle exhibited a variety of forms of miniature glass houses, with hollow 

 brick walls, put up without mortar, and roofed with sheets of glass, with- 

 out any framework of either wood or iron. The patentee offers them 

 for the growth of Seedlings, Salad herbs, and Strawberries, and alleges that 

 Grapes, and even Pine-apples, may be grown in them. What they are capable of 

 accomplishing in that way it is not my intention now to inquire into, but it does 

 not appear to have entered the mind of the inventor of these miniature hot- 

 houses that children would play at Gardening with such handy materials, just 

 as they play now at Housebuilding with a box of wooden bricks. 



There are few of us who have grown old in gardening who have not at one 

 time or another been confronted with the Children's Garden, either as a weed or 

 as a flower, in our path. I have bright recollections of young ladies' flower-gar- 

 dens, where the narrow walks were edged with Box, and coated with yellow sand, 

 and the beds carefully blackened by finely-sifted peat earth, and where many a 

 fine old favourite flower had still its claims allowed ; but the great difficulty was 

 how to propagate by cuttings flowering plants that would not otherwise increase, 

 except by the slow process of dividing the roots. What a boon one of these 

 ■small propagating pits would have been to such a garden, — so easily set up, so 

 easily shifted, and withal so cheap. It makes the wheels of Horticulture drag 

 heavily when the young gardeners are unable to propagate their pet plants, and 

 hence the need of Plant Protectors. In my boyhood I found out this fact, and 

 felt the difficulty keenly, for I was an amateur at twelve years of age, and had a 

 ncodk in my father's garden for the pursuit of horticulture, long before I got my 



