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THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



During recent years the most graceful things and of permanent 

 value in our gardens are Bamboos. 



The Bamboo garden formed a few years ago at Kew has proved 



so well adapted for the plants, that a few notes as to its position 



and soil may be of value to the numerous readers 



Bamboos at Kew. who intend to grow the Bamboos. A position 



was selected in the middle of a wood near the 



Rhododendron dell, and taking advantage of a hollow already 



existing there, the ground was lowered some 5 feet or 6 feet below 



the surrounding level. A belt of shrubs on the north and east sides, 



Gunnera and Bamboo. 



between the trees and the Bamboos, together with the low level, affords 

 them a shelter almost as perfect as can be furnished out of doors. 

 Even the bitterest north-easter loses a good deal of its sting before 

 it reaches these Bamboos. What the cultivator of Bamboos has 

 most to fear is not a low temperature merely most of the Bamboos 

 will stand 20 or 25 of frost in a still atmosphere but the dry winds 

 of spring. 



Bamboos like best a free, open, sandy loam, and the greater part 

 of the soil at Kew is poor and sandy ; but there is, in one part, a belt 

 of good stiff loam extending for a few hundred yards, and it is on 

 the border of this that the Bamboo garden is situated. At the com- 

 mencement the ground was trenched to a depth of 3 feet, and 



