1879.] FLOWER-GARDENING NOTES. 553 



glossum we recently observed a batch of plants iu Messrs Veitch's nursery, a 

 great portion of which, were labelled ' sold.' Visitors have seen, admired, and 

 purchased them." 



Plants that "go off" amongst gardeners usually turn out to be popular 

 subjects of general culture. Beader. 



FLOWER-GARDENING NOTES. 



Thanks to the fine autumn weather, flowering bedding-plants have late 

 in the season somewhat retrieved the bad repute they got into through- 

 out the summer and early autumn months. At present date (November 

 10) Geraniums are still blooming freely, but tender subjects, such as 

 Ageratums, Iresines, &c, have been destroyed by frosts; and the 

 arrangements have, notwithstanding the dry weather, been incomplete. 

 If one could only be certain, at least to an extent sufficient to be sure 

 of the general run of weather, it would be a comparatively easy matter 

 to suit our bedding arrangements to the weather ; but as things go at 

 present, any attempt at doing so is simply haphazard. When the study 

 of the weather attains to the dignity of one of the correct sciences, 

 what a great load off gardeners' shoulders it will be merely to consult 

 the report of the current season's weather and arrange accordingly. As 

 it is, there is no date which can be relied on as trustworthy, and we are 

 obliged to take the weather as it comes, and find the bedding-out either 

 suitable or otherwise as the case may be. Leaving the weather out of 

 account as a factor over which we have neither control nor sufficient 

 knowledge to make up for want of control by other means, we are re- 

 duced to doing what we can with the subjects already in cultivation as 

 bedding-plants, or those which may be added from time to time as their 

 suitability is noted. The fault in the various phases through which 

 the " bedding-out" system has come, has been the exclusion of all other 

 modes of arrangement, or kind of plants used at particular times, if not 

 in the fashion at that particular period. That fault is as prevalent at 

 the present day as ever it was when lines of red, white, and blue were 

 set off against clumps of the same and other distinct colours, varied, 

 without being improved, by cutting up the beds and borders in kaleido- 

 scopic fashion. Carpet-bedding when "gone into" has been rendered 

 somewhat nauseating to many ; and the " rage " for hardy plants, if 

 too exclusively adopted, will merely mark another era in the history of 

 modern bedding-out. To give hardy plants, as bedding plants, a fair 

 trial, it would be necessary to alter the conformation of most gardens. 

 As a rule, they are not suitable for massing in geometrically formed 

 designs, nor do many of them possess continuous blooming capacity to 

 allow their taking a position of prominence in any such arrangements. 

 At the same time, there are many gardens with the beds so disposed 

 that these can be made use of both usefully and effectively. Some 



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