392 



JOUKNAL OF HOETICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



( November 20, 1873. 



mould. I am of opinion that the soil upon which the leaves 

 are produced has much, if not all, to do with the quality of the 

 mould they produce when decomposed. I have always found 

 that leaf mould obtained from chalk had an injurious effect 

 upon pot plants. Have any of our readers noticed similar 

 results ? The subject I consider of very great importance, and 

 any experiences should be recorded. — Expekto C'kede. 



GEAPE SHEDS. 



It is many years since we gave an account of Mr. Eivers' 

 method of growing Vines in pots resting on the hot-water 

 pipes of the house, and if we recollect rightly, the idea was 

 suggested to his mind by a friend having told him that in 

 Syria he saw the Vine luxuriating among rocks which were so 

 hot that the bare hand could not touch them. "In short," 

 said Mr. Eivers, " you may roast the roots of a Vine and never 

 injure it, provided you give a supply of moisture." For a 

 long time this methtd of growing them has been followed in 

 the same house even till now, and with marked success. But 

 lately two immense glazed sheds — for mere sheds they really 

 are, having been erected 

 to furnish shelter to the 

 potted fruit trees during 

 winter — have had heated 

 pipes put into them, and 

 on these pipes the pot 

 Tines were placed, stand- 

 ing on slates. This struc- 

 ture is 400 feet long, 

 parted into two divisions, 

 14 feet wide, 10 feet high 

 at the back, and 5 feet in 

 the front. The supports 

 are deal posts in iron 

 sockets, the same as are 

 described in " The Or- 

 chard House." The walls 

 are formed of half-inch 

 boards nailed over one 

 another, so as to prevent 

 draughts when they are 

 joined. The glass i.g 

 21-oz. squares of 24 ins. 

 wide. The ventilation is 

 by a 2-feet shutter ou 

 hiuges in front, and no 

 ventilation at the back. 

 The house is heated by 

 three 4-inch pipes and a 

 Deards' boiler. 



The Vines are planted in 15-inch pots, placed in the house 

 on Elates over the pipes 2 feet apart, in the middle of Decem- 

 ber. They gave twenty bunches of blossom, which were thinned 

 to ten, but Mr, Eivers thinks eight better; and in May and 

 June the crop was ripened, and not a failure among them. 

 The bunches averaged three-quarters of a pound each, and 

 they wculd have ripened three weeks earlier if the walls of the 

 shed had been of brick. Vines costing 12.s. to 1.5s. each would 

 give on an average G lbs. each of ripe fruit in April and May. 

 The cost of this immense structure is at the rate of lOd. per 

 foot, or £200 for the whole, without the heating. 



Mr. Eivers thinks the method the most cheap and safe of 

 all, and that it gives no encouragement to Phylloxera. 



tJ-ST 



Eivers' Grape Shed. 



THE BEDDING-OUT SYSTEM. 



The massing or bedding-out of groups of halt-hardy plants 

 as an embellishment to the grounds surrounding country and 

 suburban residences during the summer months is now uni- 

 versally practised. This is generally accomplished with good 

 effect, and may be considered as an improvement upon the 

 state of things which it has in a great measure displaced. 



The bedding-out system, as it is called, ia of comparatively 

 recent introduction, for there are still many amongst us who 

 have not yet begun to consider themselves as very old, who 

 must remember the commencement or the gradual introduc- 

 tion of this system. 



The practice of horticulture may, of course, be regarded as 

 among the earliest employments of the human race. Still it 

 does not appear that flowers received at au early period of our 

 history a great amount of consideration. It is true that the 



goddess Flora is made to figure among the deities of ancient 

 mythology, and in Holy Writ flowers are occasionally alluded 

 to as "the Lilies of the field," Ac; but nothing that I am 

 aware of is said about their cultivation, so we may reasonably 

 infer that flowers were at that time generally left to take care 

 of themselves. We read in the first book of Kings that Ahab 

 coveted the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite for the purpose 

 of making a garden of herbs. The word " herbs " may, of 

 course, in its signification have included flowers ; but it is 

 more likely to have meant culinary vegetables, and Ahab, it is 

 to be feared, coveted the site of Naboth's vineyard for a " kale- 

 yard," and not for a parterre, although it was near to his house 

 or palace. In the famous gardens of king Aleinous, as de- 

 scribed by Homer in the Odyssey, which must have flourished 

 — if they ever existed — many centuries before the commence- 

 ment of the Christian era, mention is made of the Apple, the- 

 Pear, Grapes, Figs, Pomegranates, &c., also of avenues of 

 Plane trees and groves of Olives, showing that even at that 

 early period some attention had been given to the cultivation 

 of fruit and ornamental trees; but little or no allusion is made 

 to flowers. Indeed floriculture does not appear to owe much to^ 



either the ancient Greeks 

 _ _ _ or the Eomaus, notwith- 



standing their advanced 

 civilisation and their 

 wondrous skill in the arts 

 of sculpture and archi- 

 tecture — arts, by the 

 way, which were even 

 brought to bear upon 

 -uch subjects as ever- 

 green trees and shrubs, 

 as the "topiarian" (as 

 the artistic gardener of 

 the period was termed) 

 aspired to imitate or to 

 rival the art of the sculp- 

 tor, and unfortunate 

 Yew trees, the Cypress, 

 the Holly, the Box and 

 other evergreens were 

 tortured and clipped into 

 forms, more or less un- 

 couth, of birds, animals, 

 etc., of various sorts. 

 This, combined witb 

 fountains, grottoes, and 

 statuary, appears to have 

 formed the severely arti- 

 ficial style of garden em- 

 bellishment which found 

 favour in former times with the wealthy Italians, and which 

 ultimately made its way into this and other European coun- 

 tries. But the practice of this style of ornamentation has 

 happily been long abandoned, and it would be difficult at the 

 present time to find any trace of it, if we except the circum- 

 stance of one or two old country seats where a few years since 

 by no means unsuccessful attempts were made to revive it, to 

 some extent at least. 



As an offshoot of this exceedingly artificial style may, 

 perhaps, be classed that of Box-embroidery and coloured 

 gravel, ic, which some few years since was attempted to be 

 introduced into our gardens ; but fortunately this style never 

 became popular. So long as the topiarian system of embel- 

 lishment held possession of public favour floriculture appears 

 to have been proportionately neglected ; and although the rival 

 houses of York and Lancaster adopted for their respective 

 emblems the red and white Eoses, still their partisans, it may 

 well be supposed, were generally too actively engaged in the 

 destruction of each other to find either time or inclination for 

 the pursuit of an art so gentle as that of floriculture. 



It would, however, appear that even the present and pre- 

 vailing style of embelhshing the parterre is by no means 

 without its detractors and opponents, although many of the 

 objections which they bring to bear against it appear to be 

 more imaginary than real. It is said in disparagement of this 

 system that a too free use is made of the bright or primary 

 by colours, which a glaring effect is produced which savouro 

 much of vulgarity. It would, of course, be unwise to argue 

 that the laws of good taste are never transgressed in this 

 manner; but, as a rule, this is by no means generally the case. 

 On the contrary, instances arc not rare where, by judicious 



