IN MY LADY'S GARDEN 



a rough box (such as can be easily selected at the grocer's) 

 placed on the floor in the kitchen or any other warm room. 

 This box should be deep enough to hold the plants without 

 injury to the tips of their shoots, and 2 or 3 inches of fine 

 coal ashes (which must always be kept moist) can be laid at 

 the bottom, on which the pots should rest. A piece or two 

 of glass will cover the whole, allowing a little air to escape 

 at the corners ; and in this safe retreat the plants will be 

 refreshed by the moistened atmosphere, and at the same 

 time free from frost and from all rapid changes of tem- 

 perature and bitter blasts during the early morning. But, 

 fortunately, there are some hardier plants which will 

 manage to survive even these trials, and most of our 

 furnishing plants should be selected from amongst these 

 if we wish to avoid disappointment and disaster. 



Aspidistra lurida variegata, sometimes called the Parlour 

 Palm, the most long-suffering of all our room plants, will 

 bear almost anything (including want of water or a constant 

 deluge) at least for a time. This plant should not often be 

 repotted, and requires poor soil, or it will lose its white 

 stripes. Amongst smaller furnishing plants there are few 

 which are so easily managed as Anthericum variegatum, 

 which possesses curious glass-like enlargements of its roots, 

 enabling it to survive when very short of water, and it is 

 hardy enough to bear a little frost, whilst its foliage does 

 not suffer so much as that of most plants in dry, hot air. 



The anthericums (which belong to the order liliaceas) all 

 have white starry flowers, but St. Bruno's lily (A. liliastrum) 

 and St. Bernard's lily (A. liliago) are fairly hardy garden 

 plants of great beauty ; whilst A. variegatum is most 

 decorative in the conservatory, the cool porch, or the 

 room. The tiny white stars which it produces on its 

 long flower spikes, have the singular property of growing 

 from flowers to seeds, and from these into plantlets, without 

 reaching the soil ; it therefore makes a desirable basket 

 plant, and is easily propagated by cutting off a spray of 

 these little plants and pegging them down into a box 

 of light soil ; when every one of them will quickly throw 



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