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JOOBNAL OF HOKTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ August 14, 1873. 



ripe, extremely juicy, rich, and vinous. Flesh dark red through- 

 out ; euds depressed. Plant of low growth and compact, 

 healthy, and a great bearer. Season, main crop aud late. 



Out of the same strain I have also another which I call Fair 

 Ladij, in which the fruit, however ripe, never colours deeper 

 than a salmon pink. This forms a dkect contrast to the 

 above, though reared from the same Strawberry, aud is a nice 

 sharp-flavoured fruit, which some would have called Pink 

 Elton instead of the above name. 



I have another seedling which I must just mention and then 

 say good-bye to the Strawberry world for the present — viz.. 

 Excelsior. There are several Excelsiors I find, so probably I 

 may have to change the name of this variety. Besides being 

 a very handsome late fruit, aud, perhaps, the best-behaved sort 

 under glass, with very high flavour and excellent colour, its 

 runners have the property after the parent plants have ripened- 

 off their fruit, of blossoming all over the beds till the beds are 

 one mass of bloom. I am aware that several kinds. La Con- 

 stante among the rest, have this property to a limited extent ; 

 but iu the above variety, which is a second remove from Cocks- 

 comb (by which I have cxuite got rid of the cockscomb shape), 

 and which has nothing to do with the La Constante race, the 

 beds become laden with fruit tUl frost sets in. Fragaria tard- 

 issima is just now beginning to colour its fruit. This kind 

 throws-off a moderate quantity of fruit during August, and 

 sometimes to the beginning of September, and by this time 

 the Excelsior runners are setting theii' fruit, aud continue 

 bearing till the first severe frost. I have no doubt, therefore, 

 that if these runners were potted-off before the autumnal 

 frosts set in, and duly cared for under glass, say in a mo- 

 derately warm frame, Strawberries of excellent quality might 

 be had till the approach of winter, thus making it possible to 

 produce this charming fruit eight mouths out of the year. — 

 W. EoDEN, JI.D., Mornings ide, Kidderminster. 



MESSES. BACKHOUSE & SON'S, YOEK. 



To be a florist, and at the same time a lover of Nature's 

 flowers, is cousideredto be well nigh an impossible conjunction; 

 aud therefore those who have been iu the habit of regarding 

 me simply as a bigoted old florist, will be perhaps surprised 

 to see ■ me put my hand to the statement that I have never 

 enjoyed a ramble through a nursery so much as I did a morn- 

 ing's visit to my valued friend James Backhouse, of York ; and 

 I am sure of this, that no botanist that ever lived could have 

 felt more intense pleasure at the discovery of some new or 

 rare plant than I did last year when I came upon those glorious 

 masses of Geutiana alpiua and Silene acaulis on the top of 

 the Col de Bame last year. They are common flowers enough, 

 but to see them thus in all theii' native vigour and beauty, aud 

 in the midst of such surroundings, was a thing worth expe- 

 riencing. I have ever believed that my love for flowers was 

 not measured by their exhibition value, and one proof of this, 

 which I cherish, is my love for wild flowers, and especially 

 Alpine flowers, and that, as I say, without being a bit of a 

 botanist. 



Everyone who owns a garden, and is acquainted with what 

 is going on in ihe horticultural world, has heard of the York 

 nurseries ; and it was, therefore, with no ordinary expectations 

 that I wended my way thither on the day before the Great 

 Y'orkshire Gala, aud would gladly record my impressions of its 

 wonders ; but I have ever felt when writing of auy place that 

 really merits praise, how dilficult it is to give auy adequate 

 idea of it, and in reading descriptions of scenery it is ever the 

 same. Who has ever enabled one to realise the grandeur of 

 Alpine scenery ? or would Byron's description of the storm at 

 sea bring it home to one who has never seen the wild waves 

 tossing to and fro? I must, therefore, crave indulgence if 

 what I write seems to those who have never seen what I 

 attempt to describe poor and tame, aud if it fails to convey 

 any adequate impression to those who have not been there. 

 I am uot going to attempt a general description of Messrs. 

 Backhouse's nursery of seveuty-two acres, with its ranges of 

 glass. Orchid houses, &c. It wiU surprise no one to hear that 

 these are admirably kept, and that many a treasure is to be 

 found in their recesses. Nor shall I venture to write of their 

 fernery, with its noble tree Ferns aud rare aud valuable 

 species, for I have seen others, at least one other, which, if 

 my memory serves me right, exceeds it — viz., Mr. Bewley's, of 

 Black Kock, in Dublin, which I endeavoured to describe a few 

 years ago iu the columns of this .Jourual ; but there were two 

 special objects of interest which to me were utterly now — I 



mean the Alpine garden and the underground fernery. I have 

 seen Alpines growiug iu other places ; I have seen, for in- 

 stance, the Eev. Mr. EUacombe's, of Bittou ; but nothing I 

 have ever seen can for a moment bear comparison with that of 

 Messrs. Backhouse's, while their underground fernery is, I 

 believe, imique ; and it is of these I now write. 



Everyone who knows Y'ork is aware of the very level nature 

 of the surrounding country ; but when standing on the lawn 

 in front of Mr. Backhouse's house you might imagine yourself 

 iu the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells or some such rock- 

 abounding place, for at immense cost aud with a great deal of 

 trouble a large quantity of rock has been brought together, and 

 so judiciously and naturally have the rocks been placed that you 

 seem rather to be looking on a place whence stones have been 

 quarried, aud where, as iu the Buttes Chaumout at Paris, the 

 ground has been afterwards utiUsed for a rock garden. 



In the construction of the Alpine Valley some hundreds of 

 tons of stone have been used, and with such effect as only 

 could have been gained by a skilful and tasteful eye ; and in 

 this valley have been arranged without doubt the most varied, 

 extensive, and valuable collection of Alpine plants ever brought 

 together. At the period of my visit the Gentians, of which 

 there is here a fine collection, were over, but Dianthus, Aqui- 

 legia, Cistus, Iberis, &c., were in full beauty. What can be 

 more lovely than the clumps to be seen here of the lovely 

 Dianthus neglectus with its bright cherry carmine flowers, or 

 alpinus with deep rose or flesh-coloured flowers spotted with 

 crimson, and not rising above 3 inches from the ground? 

 Then there was Dianthus cruentus with deep red flowers iu 

 clusters, but not so comp.act as the two previously mentioned. 

 Aquilegias were deeply interesting. Foremost amongst them 

 was the comparatively rare A. leptocera lutea ; it has large 

 golden-yellow, long-spui'red flowers, which are produced in 

 great abundance. It is apparently entirely different from aurea 

 which has been lately seen in London, as its flowers are more 

 like cserulea, while lutea is more Uke the common Columbine 

 in form. Then there were fine clumps of the beautiful Aqui- 

 legia c;Erulea, which has proved to be a most lovely and easily- 

 managed species ; it seeds freely, and is easily raised from 

 seed. 



Some of the Forget-me-nots were iu great beauty. Nestling 

 down at the foot of a large rock was a lovely mass of Myosotis 

 rupicola, the most lovely of all the genus ; very dwarf, aud 

 with flowers of a deep violet blue. It is a native plant, is never 

 found at a lower elevation than 2100 feet, and deUghts in a 

 shady spot or in a northern aspect. M. montana was nearly 

 over, and is the same as M. dissitiflora, of which so much has 

 been said lately. Another blue flower of singular beauty was 

 Lithospermum petrfeum, a shrubby species profusely covered 

 with heads of porcelain blue flowers ; while the older L. pro- 

 stratum, or, as it is often erroneously called, fruticosum, with 

 its deep briUiant blue flowers, was growiug in great luxuriance. 

 Of the Gentians still remaining iu flower was the lovely Geu- 

 tiana bavarica, diflicult to manage, but charming when caught 

 in its beauty. Of the Lychnis tribe there was Lychnis Lagascse, 

 a beautiful species from the Pyrenees, of a bright rosy carmine 

 colour ; and alpiua, not rising more than i inches, with dense 

 heads of rose-coloured flowers. Those somewhat diflicult 

 flowers to manage, the Andromedas, were represented by fine 

 clumps of Andromeda fastigiata and tetragona with their beau- 

 tiful, waxy. Heath-like beUs. Ah ! I wish I could convey to 

 the minds of those who read this barren story an idea of the 

 Alpine summit to which we gradually wound our way, where, 

 placed on various aspects and under varying conditions, were 

 to be found some of the greater rarities of the collection. Here, 

 planted out in various places, vas the rare and curious Lewisia 

 rediviva. It forms rosettes of leaves 2 or 3 inches long, and 

 after they have attained their full growth the plant is covered 

 with a profusion of the most lovely flowers, shaded pink with 

 a white centre. It is recorded of the first specimen introduced 

 into this country that it had been dipped iu boiling water and 

 then pressed for an herbarium specimen for nearly two years ; 

 it then showed signs of Ufe, and eventually grew and flowered. 

 It can hardly be diflicult to grow after that. Here, too, was 

 the beautiful Piuguicula vallisueria>foUa from the mountains of 

 Spain, N^-ith beautiful lilac-purple flowers. Eritrichium nanum 

 is another lovely Alpine with dense dwarf foliage, with blue 

 Forget-me-not-liie flowers. It is a bonne bouche for snails, 

 who will not leave it alone, and it therefore requii-es to be very 

 carefully watched. And what a lovely thing is Iberis jucnnda, 

 with its bright purplish-pink flowers on tufts of foliage not 

 more than -i to G inches high ! and how ai ouce it catches the 



