has its merits, though it involves a large amount of edging. Mynthurst 

 has a strong soil, an advantage not always to be had in this district, 

 so that Roses can be well grown, and some of the Lilies. Here the 

 Tiger Lily, that fine autumn flower, does finely. It is one of the Lilies 

 that is puzzling, or as we call it, capricious, which only means that we 

 gardeners are ignorant and do not understand its vagaries. For in some 

 other heavy soils it refuses to grow, and in some light ones it luxuriates ; 

 but it is so good a plant that it should be tried in every garden. 



It is a pretty plan to have the orchard in connexion with the flower- 

 borders; though from the point of view of good gardening the wisdom is 

 doubtful of having clumps of flowers round the trunks of the fruit-trees. 

 Shallow-rooted annuals for a season or two may do no harm, but the 

 disturbance of the ground needful for constant cultivation, with the 

 inevitable consequence of worry and irritation of the fruit-trees' roots, 

 can hardly fail to be harmful, though the effect meanwhile is certainly 

 pretty. The evil may not show at once, but is likely to follow. 



One does not often see so strong a Canterbury Bell in the autumn as 

 the one in the picture. It must have been a weak or belated plant of 

 last year that made strong growth in early summer. Sometimes one 

 sees such a plant that had remained in the kitchen-garden reserve bed ; 

 left there because it was weaker than the ones taken for planting out in 

 autumn. It is not generally known that these capital plants will bear 

 potting when they are almost in bloom, so that when a few are so left, 

 they can be used as highly decorative room plants, and have the advan- 

 tage of lasting much longer than when in the open border, exposed to the 

 sun. One defect these good plants have, which is the way the dying 

 flowers suddenly turn brown. Instead of merely fading and falling, and 

 so decently veiling their decadence, the brown flowers hang on and are 

 very unsightly. It is only, however, a challenge to the vigilance of the 

 careful gardener ; they must be visited in the morning garden-round and 

 the dead flowers removed. It is like the care needed to arrest the 

 depredations of the mullein caterpillar. It is no use wondering whether 

 it will come, or hoping it will not appear ; it always comes where there 

 are mulleins, about the second week of June. When the first tiny 

 enemy is seen, any mulleins there may be should be visited twice a day. 



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