26 THE PARLOR GARDENER. 



Flower Pots for the Mantel-piece Garden. 



"Whatever may be your taste for elegance, be- 

 lieve in the experience of an old gardener, and 

 never plant your crocuses and Van Tholl tulips 

 on your mantel-piece in any thing else than the 

 ordinary earthenware flower pots, which cost a 

 few cents, varying in price according to their 

 size. Conceal their coarse surfaces with cover- 

 ings of glazed paper, folded and cut at their 

 upper edge, and place under each pot a porcelain 

 saucer ; and this is the utmost extent you can 

 be permitted to go in sacrifices to elegance. If 

 you plant these poor bulbs in rich vases of var- 

 nished sheet iron or porcelain, painted and gilt, 

 they will languish, and your hopes will be com- 

 pletely deceived; for they will bloom badly, or 

 not bloom at all. The porous nature of the ordi- 

 nary earthenware flower pots is perfectly well 

 adapted to the vegetation of the roots of orna- 

 mental plants. If you place these roots in iron 

 or porcelain, you will not obtain, however sed- 

 ulous your care, any satisfactory result ; no more 

 in the garden on the mantel-piece than elsewhere. 



