12 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 



THE STAGING 



The staging must be arranged according to the width of 

 the house. Narrow houses may be provided with a stage 

 on each side and a path through the centre. Other struc- 

 tures of sufficient width should be furnished with a side 

 stage measuring 4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches in width, and a 

 central stage on a somewhat higher level, and rising in steps 

 to the middle and highest point. 



Iron frame-work is the best, because it is clean and 

 almost indestructible. The uprights resting on the floor 

 should be fixed in metal saucers, which, if kept filled with 

 water, offer great obstacles to insects ascending from the 

 floor. The open wood-work resting on the iron frames, 

 and on which the plants are to stand, should be of teak 

 or pitch-pine, and arranged trellis-like. For some years 

 past it has been the practice to have a close, moisture- 

 holding stage of slate, or tiles, beneath the upper and open 

 wood-work stage. It was an invention of my own when 

 adapting an ordinary plant-house with a slate stage to 

 receive one of the earliest importations of Odontoglossum 

 crispum. The existing slate stage was made water-tight 

 at the joints, and a fillet of cement was run along the 

 back ; the surface was then covered with clean shingle, 

 and home-made trellises, raised on bricks in three levels, 

 were placed along the close staging to receive the plants. 

 It proved a great success, and in the same house the small, 

 bottom ventilators, the first of their kind, but which have 

 now become general, were an equally good innovation. At 

 that time, and for many years afterwards, the flooring of 



