230 



THE FLORISIS MANUAL. 



pound weight over your head with your 

 elbow bent and raising the same weight 

 with your arm perfectly straight. Aspect 

 and prevailing winds must be your guide 

 in ventilating. 



While you are having sashes made 

 have them large enough. If the house is 

 from nineteen to twenty-three feet wide 

 the ventilators should be from thirty to 

 thirty-six inches deep and continuous. 

 The length of each section should be not 

 over five feet or the sashes will be too 

 heavy to lift easily, but there is not 

 nearly so much weight to lift when they 

 open at the ridge as when hinged at the 

 ridge. The ventilator man will tell you 

 how many machines you need. 



No one would think in this day of 

 ventilating without the use of one of the 

 machines which do their work so ad 

 mirably. They will pay for themselves 

 easily in labor saving in one year, and 

 without them I can t see how you could 

 manage. Yet some struggle on without 

 them. It is not the labor saving alone, it 

 is the plants that suffer when the sashes 

 are moved by ropes or rods or sticks. To 

 raise or lower a lot of sashes by those . 

 crude methods is quite a chore and too 

 often if you are busy and you think 

 actual necessity does not compel, you are 

 too apt to say, &quot;It s pretty warm, but I 

 guess it won t hurt. You are shirking 

 the job, but how easy to say, &quot;Jim, put 

 on a crack of air, and Jim turns the 

 handle and up go a hundred feet of 

 sashes in a moment, and only fun to do 

 it. There are several good appliances. 

 I have five different makes, and like best 

 the Challenge ventilator. 



yellow Calceolaria aurea floribunda was 

 one of the most useful and gaudy plants, 

 and with the blue lobelia made a most 

 striking show. The calceolaria is useless 

 here. 



Veranda-boxes are not suitable in con 

 nection with a brownstone castle, and 

 they don t have anything so common as 

 a veranda, but in many of our beautiful 

 homes where part of the front or side of 

 the house is a veranda they are most ap 

 propriate. They are seldom on the top 

 of the rail, but usually on the level of 

 the floor of the veranda, and the tops of 

 the plants reach up to the rail. 



If asked to furnish the boxes you 

 should be able to do it and have some 

 planing mill man of your acquaintance 

 know how to put them together. Have 

 them made of cypress and well painted to 

 suit the color of the wood of the veranda. 

 A very good size is six inches deep, nine 

 inches wide at top and eight inches at 

 bottom, all inside measure. We fill many 

 larger, but they should not be smaller for 

 plants to do well. Holes are bored in the 

 bottom to afford drainage. If they are 

 made in sections of six feet they are easy 

 to handle and can be taken to the green 

 house to fill, but if very large we cart the 

 soil and plants to the lawn. Such a box 

 as I have given the size for is worth to 

 make of cypress and painted 75 cents per 

 lineal foot and you should get the same 

 price per foot for filling it. Like the 

 vases a good appearance is expected from 

 the very start. 



If in the afternoon sun, the same plants 

 are used as those mentioned for vases, 

 but more cannas can be used in the back 



A Window-Box Filled With Ferns and Palms. 

 VERANDA-BOXES. 



This style .of ornamental gardening is 

 very much in vogue in some cities, in 

 none I think more than the fine residence 

 city of Buffalo. They are an evolution 

 from the more humble window-box which 

 I noticed was very much in use in humble 

 dwellings of European cities, where the 



of the box, and don t use too many 

 colcuses or they will smother the gerani 

 ums. The drooping vines will be the 

 chief beauty of these boxes and it mat 

 ters not how common they are if they 

 grow freely. The pilogyne and lophos- 

 permum- are two splendid droopers for 

 this, purpose. Mignonette and lemon ver 

 bena can be used for their sweet odor. 



If the boxes get only the morning sun, 

 or very little at all, the geraniums will 

 not flower, but you can use several plants 

 that you could not in the sunny bleak 

 exposures of the cemetery. Begonia Rex 

 looks well. Fuchsias will thrive and 

 flower if not too crowded, and small 

 plants of latania and kentia, and better 

 for fine effect than all is the beautiful 

 nephrolepis, both the Boston form and 

 tuberosa. Nothing is equal to these ferns, 

 and if kept watered they stand the sun 

 finely. 



Veranda-boxes are nearly always satis 

 factory. They are more or less sheltered 

 and get plenty of water. Instruct your 

 patrons that, the soil being crowded with 

 roots, the plants want a good soaking 

 every evening, and tell them that when 

 the coachman or they themselves handle 

 the hose not to stand .and let drive at 

 them as if they were putting out a fire, 

 but let the hose run in on the soil till it 

 is well wet. 



VERBENA. 



The garden varieties of these well- 

 known plants are probably hybrids. They 

 have been decidedly deposed from their 

 former popularity by the carpet and sub 

 tropical bedding, but of late we see many 

 more verbena beds, and few plants can 

 be prettier. The varieties we get from 

 seed are now so good that little attention 

 is paid to named sorts and the trouble 

 of keeping them over winter is dispensed 

 with. 



If you wish to propagate fine varieties 

 tuey should be shortened back about Sep 

 tember 1, and kept watered. By the end 

 of the month there will be plenty of nice, 

 fresh cuttings, and only a quick, tender 

 growth should be used. Put the cuttings 

 in the propagating house, or what is as 

 good, in flats with some soil in the bot 

 tom and sand on the surface. Keep the 

 flats in a coidframe and keep moist and 

 shaded from the sun. They will take a 

 copious watering every day. 



Verbenas will stand quite a- frost, but 

 it is not well to let the cuttings freeze. 

 When rooted they can be kept in a cool 

 but light house and be kept in the flats 

 till after New Year s, when they can be 

 potted off into 2% -inch pots and kept in 

 a temperature of 50 degrees. You will 

 soon get plenty of cuttings which root 

 very freely, and before spring you can 

 have a large stock. Plants propagated 

 from cuttings want to flower early and 

 those propagated in February and March 

 will want at least one pinching. 



Seed is now used by most florists for 

 their stock of verbenas. It has the ad 

 vantage of producing good, healthy plants 

 free of all disease, and when planted out 

 they are sure to do well and make a 

 most satisfactory flower bed. Sow the 

 seed in February, and pot into 2-inch 

 pots as soon as they are up an inch. You 

 can usually get a cutting from an early 

 sowing if you wish. If not, just pinch 

 out the tip of the plant. A temperature 

 of 45 to 50 degrees will suit these seed 

 lings, but they should be given full light. 



There is no place equal to a mild hot 

 bed for the verbenas, so about the middle 

 of April plunge the small pots in a few 

 inches of soil in a mild bed. They will 



