172 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ March 2, 1876. 



beginnitg to 6ower too eoon, or of their being made too tender. 

 And then with regard to tbe poor unfortunates with dry roots 

 and flagging leaves on shelves ; they are not watered because 

 I am told bedding plants do not want water in winter, it 

 would unduly excite them. 



I have now for several years carefully tested the fact whether 

 plants kept growing all the winter and put out in May in full 

 bloom, last any less time in bloom than those which have 

 their growth and then their blooms to make. I have kept 

 Geraniums in bloom on shelves in a stove all winter, and 

 found they bloomed juat as freely in the summer ; and certainly 

 I have always found the beds of Geraniums which were in 

 fulle&t bloom when I put them out first filled the beds with 

 growth and bloomed best afterwards, and will last in bloom 

 quite as long as those that come into bloom later. In fac*, at 

 taking-up time, except that the plants may be bigger, there 

 will be no difference as to the number of blooms. Of couib-, 

 a zonal Pelargonium is an exceptionally free-blooming plant, 

 and (so long as it grows well), provided it does not overgrow, 

 it will continue to bloom. 



It is not equally true of Lobelias or Verbenas that if put 

 out in full bloom they will continue to bloom the whole season. 

 Still it is equally true that they do not require much rest in 

 winter. Verbenas should be kept growing, but the growths 

 should be pinched back so as to make the plants bushy. Lo- 

 belias, again, want the flowering shoots pinching out ; but the 

 great advantage of a tolerably warm treatment of these plants 

 during the winter is that it enables persons in spring to make 

 much larger and better plants. I know I shall be told it is 

 not everybody who has the means to give bedding plants this 

 treatment, and that they are not worth the trouble, and so on. 

 Better go back to good old perennials and mixed border plants 

 that gave one no trouble except tying-up, or dividing the 

 roots, or digging over the beds, &c. Well, il bedding-out is 

 worth doing it is worth doing well, and I am very sure that 

 the good taste of the public will not long stand the geometrical 

 arrangement of mere ornamental foliage in flat formal patterns 

 and beds. 



If a garden can be made gay from June to November with 

 a proper selection of flowering plants, and if care is taken by 

 means of Alpine plants, and bulbs, and other spring flowers to 

 make the garden bright in the spring months by hardier plants, 

 I am confident that the best strain of bedding plants will still 

 retain their ascendancy, and that the proper winter manage- 

 ment of them will still be of great importance. I know in 

 many cases they are kept cold and neglected on the makeshift 

 principle, when vineries might be utilised without any detri- 

 ment to ibe Vines. And are not, again, gardeners placed too 

 much under the dominion of their Vines ? Why should it be 

 thought the one thing requisite in gardening to be able to pro- 

 duce a bunch of Grapes at table all the year round ? And are 

 they worth all the trouble and expense they give ? I know it 

 is a bold thing to say anything against Grapes and Vines, but 

 I am free to confess that I often think they are the worst 

 things a lover of flowers has to contend with. You may in 

 happy England see miles upon miles of houses given up to 

 nothing but Vines. " Sacred to the Roots " is written on the 

 borders ; " Sacred to the Leaves, and Stems, and Fruit " is 

 scored up in the house. And if one ventures to suggest that 

 the houses might be utilised for plants as well — " Oh, no ! " 

 one is assured ; " the two things are quite incompatible." 

 Partridge is a good thing, but one even tires of toujours per- 

 drix ; and I fhauld myself get heartily tired if I always saw 

 a bunch of Grapes at table. I am afraid, however, this is a 

 digresiion which will call down the righteous wrath of many a 

 Vine-grower. In speaking of the winter management of plants 

 in houses I wish I could see a little more use made of vineries, 

 and that there was not fuch a tendency to give artificial rest 

 by means often injurious to the plants. 



These remarks are, I fear, somewhat discursive and hastily 

 written, but they will answer their object if I induce some of 

 your correspondents to still further ventilate the subject and 

 give us the benefit of their experience. What I maintain i?, 

 that many stove plants are kept needlessly dry at the roots 

 with too high a night temperature ; that many of our grefu- 

 house plants are kept, on the other hand, too cold; while our 

 bedding plants are crippled and suffer during all the summer, or 

 at all events till they have their roots and fresh growth estab- 

 liehed, because they were starved and neglected dui-ing winter. 

 The object seems to me more just to try and keep life going, not 

 to keep it vigorous and healthy ; and I feel sura with our present 

 improTementB in our means of heating, light, and ventilatioii, 



there is no reason why plants should be an eyesore during 

 winter rather than a pleasure. — C. P. Peach. 



EARLY "WRITERS ON ENGLISH GARDENING. 



No. 10. 

 EEV. SAMUEL GLLEERT. 

 Eaklv in the seventeenth century the gentry of England 

 began to write on its gardening. Dr. Beale, Evelyn, and Sir 

 William Temple are instances, and the gentleman I am about 

 noticing was one of the number. Of the birth and parentage 

 of Samuel Gilbert I have not been able to discover any par- 

 ticulars. That he was Rector of Qaatt in Shropshhre, and 

 Chaplain to Lady Jane Gerard, Baroness Bromley, is stated 

 on the title-page of his little volume entitled " Fons Sanitatis, 

 or the Healing Spring at Willowbridge in Staffordshire." This 



Fig. 4i.— Rev. Samuel Gilbert. 



was published in 1676. It was printed for the author, which 

 sustains the statement in Harwood's edition of Edswick's 

 " Antiquities of Staffordshire," that Gilbert was a physician, 

 and the book might be intended to increase the number of hie 

 patients. The clerical and medical professions were then and 

 until the end of the last century very frequently and usefully 

 combined. If they had not been so combined villages distant 

 from a town must have been almost excluded from a doctor's 

 assistance. He glances at this in his " Fons Sanitatis." At 

 the end of each list of oases cured by the Willowbridge water 

 verses are inserted in which he especially warns against those 

 unskilled practitioners 



" That speak most honey-healiog words to please you, 

 ^Vho of jour money not your pain will ease you/' 



His verses are distributed through all his works, and those in 

 Rea's "Flora" seem to be from his pen, but are only one evi- 

 dence among many that he was entitled to the designation 

 engraved beneath his portrait — " Philomusus," a Lover of 

 Learning. 



He dates his "Florist's Vade-Mfcum" "at his house in 

 Kinlet parish, near Bewdley in Worcestershire." This was in 

 1683, and his father-in-law John Ilea had been residing with 

 him; for Eea dated his "Flora, Ceres, and Pomona" in pre- 

 cisely the same terms in 1G7G, adding, " It is a rural desert 

 where it was my unhappineES to plant my stock." 



Mr. Eea died in the November of 1681, and his will states 

 that he lived in a tenement at Kinlet, rented from one Oldnall. 

 Rea devised this to his daughter Minerva, wife of Samuel 

 Gilbert, with remainder to her issue, who Rea describes as 

 his grandchildren. There was one grandson, Arden Gilbert, 

 and four or five grand-daughttrs, and among these he left the 

 profits arising from lands he leased from John Woolriche, Esq. 

 To his friend Thomas Cray of Worcester he devised such of 



