CHAPTER VIII 



CARNATIONS IN TOWN GARDENS 



By H. THOMAS 



THE Carnation is a flower for the town as well as 

 the country garden. It even seems to relish the 

 smoke of a large city, and sometimes the plants, 

 the Old Clove as an example, are as full of flowers in 

 the neighbourhood of London as in the sweeter air 

 of a seaside village, except for an absence of clearness 

 and freshness in the colouring. A well-known 

 amateur grower in a southern town, largely popu- 

 lated, says, "The Carnation and Picotee will thrive 

 while other flowers fail. Of course it is well known 

 that a clouded and impure atmosphere dims 

 the freshness of the petals of most flowers, but 

 Carnations do not mind the smoke." The following 

 is the experience of a town gardener with Carnations : 

 " The soil of an ordinary town garden can be made 

 suitable with reasonable cultivation and manuring. 

 When it is sandy or gravelly improvement is more diffi- 

 cult to achieve, but the repeated addition of road scrap- 

 ings, dead leaves, with the garden refuse and annual 

 dressing of farmyard manure, will work wonders." 

 The town garden, however, is generally too heavy and 



