WINTEE-FURNISHING FLOWER BEDS. 109 



pots during the winter to furnish flower beds early in spring, 

 is the pansy, which will flower in March and April, and may 

 be very early turned out, for the frost hardly interrupts its 

 flower, and injures only those which are open. If these be 

 used to furnish uniform flower beds, there may be a great 

 command of colours, — white, blue, and yellow, in perfection, 

 may be supplied by slips, and there should not be two colours 

 in one bed, or one range of beds. If there be six beds, every 

 second one may be blue, and alternate yellow, the white may 

 go into other uniform beds, and there may be beds made of 

 those varieties which have white or yellow ground, and dark 

 borders or markings. 



Another source of great variety and early blooming may be 

 found in bulbs, wliich are admirably adapted to pot culture — 

 the beautiful Scilla sibirica, blooming as early as the snow- 

 drop, and of the splendid bright blue almost peculiar to itself, 

 should be grown half-a-dozen in a pot ; snowdrops the same ; 

 then come hyacinths, crocuses, early tulips, and some of the 

 tuberous irises will be found as useful as bulbs. All these 

 are forwarded a good deal by frame culture, and come in at 

 seasons Avhich "will enable us to command two or three months 

 flowering, those in frames and greenhouses arriving in six 

 weeks before those in the open ground, and they may even be 

 retarded beyond tliis. 



It forms almost the study of an apprenticeship to take ad- 

 vantage of all the opportunities afibrded by pot culture for the 

 furnishing of beds and borders, and there must be a quantity 

 of glass for all the early subjects. But it is not merely the 

 early ones that want pot culture, all the common annuals that 

 would be sown in the borders have to be groAvn in pots, but 

 without protection, for the sake of working changes during 

 the Slimmer, and removing things directly they are past their 

 prime and begin to look shabby and untidy. The advantage 

 of Ufting one set of pots and dropping another set into their 

 places may be imagined, but cannot be fally appreciated 

 without actual practice ; but once fairly past the spring 

 months, the verbena and geranium furnish us with a very 

 lasting season of flowers, scarcely lessening in quantity until 

 the frost cuts them off, which in some seasons is not until a 

 late period. 



Eoses also form an endless source of bloom, particularly a 

 variety which we consider the first and best of all the China 



