THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 



197 



•woods are of excellent habit and quite hardy. They require poor 

 sandy soil and a dry position. 



Santolina rosmarinifolium. — A very beautiful glaucous-leaved 

 plant, of easy cultivation, quite hardy, and delighting in chalk and 

 sand. Every student of colour-effects should have it, with a view to 

 its extensive use when occasions arise requiring a silvery plant of a 

 decidedly shrubby character easily kept and propagated. 



Stachys lanata. — A hardy woolly-leaved plant, which will he 

 useful to those who want a plant of the habit of Centaurea candi- 

 dissima, but have not the convenience for keeping stock over winter. 

 It spreads laterally in tufts, forming dense masses of grey foliage 

 never more than six inches high, requiring no nipping down. Most 

 easily propagated by division. 



Achillea davennce is a neat silvery-leaved plant, well adapted for 

 edgiDgs. If its flowers were kept pinched back, it would be very 

 uniform and neat, but the flowers are by no means objectionable, 

 except in highly- coloured nnd very formal parterres. 



A. EgypUaca produces .fine yellow flowers, and is very distinct 

 in its grey leafage. 



Festuca glauca. — A most beautiful glaucous-leaved grass, which 

 will grow finely in any rather dry position. It does not make so 

 good an edging as it promises to when seen in separate tufts, but, 

 in some form or other, it ought to be found in every garden. 



Sedum cjluucum. — This is a close-growing species, which forms a 

 perfectly close surface of neat glaucous growth. It will be invalu- 

 able for hot dry soils, where bedding-plants of many kinds do not 

 thrive well. It is also a gem for rockwork. 



Variegated mint, which we suppose everybody knows well enough. 

 Nevertheless it is often strangely confounded with variegated balm, 

 variegated arabis, and variegated dead-nettle. The balm and the 

 dead-nettle are of no use for bedding, but make nice clumps on 

 shady rockeries ; whereas the mint, which may be identified as easily 

 by its odour as any other way, will grow in any soil or situation, 

 and, when used in masses, is one of the best plants of this class that 

 we possess. There are various ways of turning it to account. As a 

 front row to Purple Nosegay Geranium, or Eubens Geranium, or 

 Trentham Rose Geranium, it is best used alone ; but as a front row 

 to Perilla Naukinensis it has a superb effect, if intermixed with Lord 

 Raglan Verbena. It scarcely matters how late this mint is propa- 

 gated, so that it has just formed roots at the time of putting out. 

 When it is required to run up six to nine inches, the plants should 

 be strong, in 60-size pots, from cuttings taken early in spring; but, 

 if required very short and close, April is quite early enough to strike 

 it. We have made bright solid edgings by putting in cuttings in 

 May, while geraniums were hardening in pits, and, when rooted, 

 planting them without any intermediate process of potting. They 

 take hold of the ground in a few days, and, being a free grower, it 

 soon requires nipping down, which makes it dense and busby. We 

 would make a hundred feet out of half a dozen plants in 48-size pots 

 the first week in May, and have them on the ground in a passable 

 state by the middle of June, by which time the geraniums and 



July. 



