78 WESTERN HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tender. One day while visiting the greenhouse I was told that they 

 had some of these plants that came from St. Paul and they found them 

 hardy. I bought four or five of these plants and they have proved to 

 be hardy and they bloom every year. They bloom very late in the 

 season, so I think success depends largely on where you procure 

 seeds or plants. From the East we found the elm tender, while from Oak 

 Lake we found it hardy, and so we should be very careful about where 

 we procure them. Get them as far north as possible. 



MR. A. McKAY. I would like to ask the best time for uncovering 

 plants. The greatest danger to perennials is taking the covering off 

 too late in the spring. When we cover them with manure and straw 

 until the danger of frost is over, even a cold wind will kill the leaves. 

 This last two or three years we have stopped mulching and we have 

 found that these perennials will stand much more frost. My experi- 

 ence has been that if we could cover them to keep them back by keep- 

 ing them in a cold state by ice or snow that they would be all all right, 

 but if we have just a small mulch on the plant, it begins to grow and a 

 light frost or wind will kill it. 



PROF. BAIRD. My experience quite coincides with Mr. McKay's 

 in that respect. "With the exception of Raspberries I have given up the 

 plan of mulching. With Raspberries I put ,down all 'kinds. I pinch 

 them back during the summer to get the vines very branch}' before the 

 fall. Then I lay them down about the beginning of November for the 

 purpose of protection, so that the branches will not be broken off them 

 when the snow melts in the spring, even though they do not need it to 

 keep them from being winter-killed. One finds that in this case, as in 

 too may others, it is a bad plan to tamper with nature any more than 

 is absolutely necessary, so with my pansies, for instance, I do not 

 cover them at all. Sometimes a few of them die, but the majority of 

 them come through very well. As regards Phlox, Sweet William, etc., 

 my garden has a fence near by and the snow lies pretty late in the 

 spring and I leave them to the tender mercies of nature. With roses I 

 find the difficulty to be in interfering with the roots, but get over this 

 by pinning the plant down and covering very lightly. 



MR. A. P. STEVENSON. It is sometimes suggested as a protection 

 for tender roses that railroad ashes are as good a thing as can be got. 

 My experience with the plan of covering with sods was not very pleas- 

 ant. The mice would get in and bark the bushes. But as regards 

 what Mr. Bedford said of getting the trees from as far north as possi. 

 ble I may say that we have one very good illustration of that at home. 

 A number of years ago we got twenty-five of the Ontario soft maple 

 trees and some from northerly Wisconsin at the same time. Those from 

 Wisconsin are probably eighteen feet high, while those from Ontario 

 are probably eighteen inches high ; they are killed back every winter. 



