VHE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 47 
season, be transplanted into nursery lines, the same distance apart 
as the drills, and they should be from two to three inches apart in 
the lines. The following winter, cut them back, and in the course 
of the succeeding summer they will produce strong shoots, which at 
the proper moment may be budded in the usual way. To produce 
stocks for standards # period of seven years is required, and they 
should be left in the seed-bed two years, and be then transplanted, 
fifteen inches apart one way, and six inches the other. After they 
have been standing in the nursery bed two years, cut them back 
close to the ground, and in the July following select the strongest 
and straightest of the shoots, and remove all the others, to throw 
the,whole vigour of the plant into it. They must stand two years in 
the nursery-bed after they have been pruned hard back, and then be 
taken up and replanted in the rose garden or reserve ground, as may 
be most convenient. In the summer following they can be budded 
in the usual manner. It is proper to add, that standard roses on 
the seedling brier make much finer heads, and are longer-lived, than 
similar sorts on the hedge-brier, for the latter seldom has a sufficiency 
of fibrous roots to promote a thoroughly vigorous growth. Seedling 
briers are not so suitable for spring grafting as the Manetti stocks, 
THE HARDY VERBENA. 
BY WILLIAM COLE, 
The Grove Vineyard, Feltham. 
go===2—8 HE hardy verbena, known generally as Verbena venosa, 
14 (4 «was, during the time I had charge of the extensive 
yj gardens at Haling Park, found so exceedingly useful for 
#4 bedding, that I am well sure it may be most advan- 
~ tageously cultivated by amateurs who require large 
stocks of bedders. It has a very vigorous growth, much more so 
than any of the garden varieties, blooms with great freedom, and is 
in rather dry soils perfectly hardy. Its hardiness is perhaps the 
least of its good qualities, yet it is one that must not be overlooked, 
for it enables the cultivator to raise and maintain a good stock 
without fire-heat, to the advantage of the hosts of other things that 
cannot be kept through the winter without its aid. The flowers are 
of the most effective shade of rosy purple, and they are produced so 
freely that the beds are solid with bloom from quite early in the sum- 
mer until late in the autumn. In growth it is rather tall and wiry, 
and the best effect is produced by planting it in beds alternately 
with variegated geraniums, Centaurea ragusina, or other of the 
silyery-leaved plants. The wiry shoots run freely amongst these, 
and as the flowers rise a few inches above the general mass of 
leafage, the effect is of the most pleasing character. Intermixing 
them with the variegated geraniums is perhaps the best, as the 
combination of the rose-coloured flowers of the verbenas and the 
scarlet of the geraniums just above the even surface of the leafage 
February. 
