THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 23 



com])lete Tvcre killed off root and branch by a severe winter, and it is 

 because of that accident that I have remarked above that a myrtle hedge 

 must be managed in the same way as a stock of geraniums, or any other 

 and tender bedding plants. In October they should be taken up,"and either 

 planted out in a bed of loam in a cold pit, or potted separately, and 

 placed in a pit or greenhouse. This would be the only safe and certain 

 method of keeping them for ever. To keep them for a few years more or 

 less, they may be left in their places, and in such a season as this would 

 not only take no harm, but look beautiful, and be doing good, for the 

 annual lifting is not altogether beneficial to them. But there is a way of 

 hitting a medium course. Plant out your little myrtles when two or three 

 years old. Plant them early in May in strong loam, abundantly manured. 

 In the month of June immediately following, put in a lot of cuttings, 

 and grow on a stock of young plants, and keep these plants in pots as a 

 reserve, and if there comes a severe winter, and the hedge or ribbon line 

 is cut off, you wait for spring, plant out the reserve, and again raise a 

 fresh stock. This will be delightful practice, so any one who wishes for 

 a myrtle-hedge may take courage, and enter upon the task with no fear 

 of being involved in a complexity of troubles. 



The main reason why so many scrubby, leggy, and shrivelled myrtles 

 are to be seen is because it is very seldom they get food enough. Order 

 in large myrtles from a nursery, and what yellow-leaved, lanky, poverty- 

 struck plants you get. That must be borne with because the trade are 

 compelled to keep these things in as small pots as possible. But plant 

 them out in a deep yellow loam with abundance of rotten dung worked 

 in previously, and give them manure-water once a week from the end of 

 May till the end of July, and what bouncing plants they soon become, 

 the foliage dark and as glossy as if varnished, and the bare stems abun- 

 dantly clothed with leafy twigs ; and if they are in a hot position — as 

 they ought to be — they will flower abundantly, and, perhaps, grow to the 

 dimensions of trees if allowed before they are hurt to the extent of a leaf 

 by any severities of weather. For a hot wall a few large myrtles are 

 every whit as useful as the best of roses, pomegranates, or even magnolias, 

 and the best way to train them is to allow of the free growth of breast- 

 wood, so that they will present bow fronts. 



The only difference to be observed in the nature of Eugenias and 

 myrtles is that the former require a soil less rich and more peaty than the 

 myrtle, though we are very much disposed to think that the less peat the 

 better, and in our own practice we have rarely used peat except for the 

 first potting of newly-struck cuttings. That Eugenias have made very 

 little way hitherto is owing to the fact that when the fruit was first 

 exhibited, people were told they might grow it in the same way as black 

 currants, and from the cottage-garden gather the most delicious luxuries 

 that were ever tasted by man. The twenty or more species of Eugenia 

 in our stoves and greenhouses have thus for many years had a cloud upon 

 them. I tried fairly enough what could be done with them out of doors, 

 but with such ill-luck that I felt very much inclined to proscribe the 

 genus, and know it no more. The two winters of 1857 and 1858 passed 

 over a plantation of Eugenia ugni, and left them imscathed. In the 

 spring of 1859 I planted a row under the west wall of a greenhouse. 

 This was in addition to a row planted in the spring of 1857 in a very 

 sheltered sunny spot. 



