PLAKTS FOB HOME DECORATION OR EXHIBITION. 183 



best tiling we can do is to take off aU side growth, to th« 

 height we wish the head to begin, to stop all the other 

 branches to two joints until we get a sufficient number oi 

 branches to hang gracefully all round, and then to let them 

 grow to bloom. The pendulous habit of the plant is greatly 

 favourable to this, and the blooms fairly weigh down the most 

 obstinate of the shoots, so that the plant really forms a pretty 

 object. These things we can do for plants to be kept at 

 home, but there would be the greatest difficulty in transplant- 

 ing such plants to a distant show. The exhibitions are 

 therefore very detrimental to the garden at home, and besides 

 this, they give a very poor representation of an estabhshment 

 which may possess much more beautiful plants than the 

 owners choose to send out. In winter, the temperature of 

 the greenhouse, 40 degrees by night, and not more if you 

 can help it, and 50 degrees by day ; ia summer the cooler 

 the better. 



Show Flowers. — Even the plants from which we are to 

 cut blooms to show, are but sorry objects in a garden, and 

 unless there be a plot laid out on purpose for the flowers to 

 cut, the gardens cannot be kept clean and tidy : shades here, 

 glasses there, props to keep flowers in a particular position in 

 one place, and all sorts of ugly contrivances in another ; 

 plants cut up to a skeleton to give vigour to particular blooms, 

 and stripped of all but the few promising flowers. A truly 

 enthusiastic exhibitor is never fit to be seen at home except 

 by his ecjuals, who of course take a similar uiterest in all the 

 paraphernalia attendant on growing for show. The pink 

 stripped of all but forward blooms, with a glass over one, a 

 shade over another ; cabbage leaves upon glasses during the 

 heat of the sun, paper caps over others, render it an eye-sore 

 instead of a beauty ; dahlias mth tables on the side, for the 

 convenience of tjmg up a flower to be covered by a pot, the 

 branches cut away, not more than a sohtary bloom here and 

 there allowed to be seen; — all tend to set the lovers of a 

 garden who have not been bitten with the exhibiting mania 

 against competition, because the beauty at home is destroyed 

 for the fame abroad. 



But show flowers are the flowers to grow at home, and 

 those who delight in them can put up with a rose or a dahHa 

 half an inch smaller for the sake of the abundance, and are 

 unwilling to sacrifice half their pinks and carnations for the 



