2S4 THE GARDENER. [June 



The past long and severe winter, and the prolonged low temperature of the 

 spring, also now gone, continue to excite unusual comment. Even people 

 whose occupations do not lead them to take so much interest in the weather 

 as gardeners and farmers are beginning to be disquieted at the weird aspect of 

 the season. Summer is here, and yet vegetation is almost as completely at 

 rest as it was at midwinter, and snow and frost have prevailed in many places. 

 Farmers are unprecedentedly late in getting their spring crops in, and fear that 

 now these will not ripen unless the few remaining months during which we 

 can expect any real warmth are unusually favourable. As an indication of 

 the continued low state of the temperature during the last eight or nine 

 months, we were the other day shown some Cauliflower plants that were 

 sown last August, and in September pricked out into a frame, where they had 

 remained until the beginning of the present month of May without having 

 made any perceptible growth during a period of seven months. The plants 

 were not more than 3 inches high ! Let us not meet our troubles half-way, 

 however, but hope that we shall have both seed-time and harvest as usual. 



Can the collective ingenuity of the Scottish Horticultural Association sug- 

 gest nothing better— nothing more likely to promote the interests of horti- 

 culture — than a competition for the best "kitchen-garden plan," a subject 

 which we thought had been pretty well settled ? A vegetable-garden can very 

 often all be a square plot, and the chief difficulty of the designer lies in 

 contriving the best way of getting round the same with a wheelbarrow. This 

 the successful winners of the Society's prize have managed to show can be 

 done, by adhering to the old style adopted in every kitchen-garden in the 

 kingdom, down to the cottager's allotment ; and it will be no doubt pleasing 

 to them to be told by "a competent garden architect" that "they have 

 eich aiopbed the form best adapted for a kitchen-garden." Let it be under- 

 stood, however, that we do not find fault with the clever-going gardeners who 

 drew the plans — they could only operate on the lines set out for them by 

 the S. H. A., and they have shown their good sense and judgment by 

 adhering to the old style, which, indeed, they could not well have improved 

 upon. There is, however, a partial revolution going on in kitchen-garden- 

 ing itself that might have been opportunely taken notice of, and that is 

 the system of keeping the fruit and vegetable gardens distinct. In these 

 days, when gentlemen can buy many kinds of fruits and vegetables almost 

 cheaper than they can produce them at home, the subject of remunerative 

 kitchen-gardening is attracting a good deal more attention, and gardeners are 

 finding out that their success is now measured by the marketable value of 

 their productions a great deal more than it used to be; and consequently the 

 question how to lay out and crop a kitchen-garden to the best advantage is 

 the one concerning which gardeners have need to learn most at the present 

 time, and we commend the subject to the attention of those who wish to 

 encourage horticulture in the way indicated by the Scottish Horticultural 

 Association. We have said that no great alterations are suggested in the 

 formation of the vegetable quarters of a garden ; but how to reduce the extent 

 and labour of keeping garden walks and borders — how to keep the orchard 

 and vegetable departments separate with advantage to both — and above all, 

 how to utilise necessary or existing garden-walls, by covering them with glass 

 instead of erecting independent glass structures in another part of the ground, 

 and at great and extra expense, for a similar purpose, — are questions which 

 those who aspire to teach us anything on the subject should study. In this 

 respect our enterprising horticultural builders are ahead of gardeners them- 



