22 My New Zealand Garden 



in the greenhouse, where Cypripedium spectabilis 

 always flowered splendidly, sometimes producing 

 twelve blooms on one plant ; but C. villosum was 

 not so free flowering. My treatment of Masde- 

 vallias and Dendrobiums was a marked failure. 

 They would persist in working to the edges of 

 their pots, as if they wanted to get out. They 

 gave me to understand that they received neither 

 the skilled attendance nor the moist heat befitting 

 such high-class subjects. And so we parted com- 

 pany. It is almost warm enough here for the 

 lovely Stephanotis floribunda to go through the 

 winter without artificial heat, as only twice in 

 twenty years were mine killed by frost. Salvia 

 splendens is quite contented with an unheated 

 greenhouse, as well as many other subjects which 

 crowd the hothouse in England. Hoya carnosa 

 will manage through the winter out of doors 

 against a close-boarded paling fence, with another 

 creeper spreading partially over it to keep off the 

 worst of the cold. Heliotropes, when large plants, 

 can be coaxed through some winters on a sheltered 

 border, and their condition is sometimes quoted 

 to indicate the severity of the winter. ' Look at 

 your Heliotrope, that will tell you,' I have heard 

 gardeners say. Glass structures can be too hot 

 here in summer, so my plants are migratory, and 

 go out under the shade of trees, or into a skeleton 



