682 Garden Memorandums. 



and bottom, and the top which has an iron rim at bottom, where it rests 

 on the top rim of the sides ; there are openings in each end of the top 

 for giving air, with covers which fit into them. There are various other 

 protecting cases of wickerwork, in the , j^g 



form of hand glasses, and of different sizes, 

 so as to cover shrubs from 1 ft. to 6 or 8 ft. 

 high. There are very convenient garden 

 seats {Jig.\66), the backs of which fold 

 down (a) when they are not in use, to ex- 

 clude the rain from the parts which come 

 in contact with the clothes in sitting. As- 

 paragus and sea-kale are forced in an excel- 

 lent manner, by linings of dung or leaves in trenches between the beds, as 

 they stand in the garden [as at Syon, p. 504.], The sides of the beds are 

 supported by 4 in. walls of open brickwork, like that of a M'Phail's pit; 

 they have a narrow stone coping, and are surmounted in the forcing season 

 by a wooden frame or box, which has openings with hinged shutters for 

 gathering the crop. The walls are bevelled a little towards the bed, which 

 renders them stronger; and as the dung lining shrinks in sinking, this in- 

 clination arising from the pit between being rather widest at top, compensates 

 for the vacuity that would otherwise be formed between the dung and the 

 brickwork, and, by preventing the contact of the former with the latter, 

 admit of the escape of heat. We consider this by far the best plan of 

 forcing these plants which has yet been devised. Not only do the plants 

 produce crops annually, while when they are taken up, and forced on dung 

 beds, they are destroyed; but, in consequence of the same plant being 

 forced every year, their habits become changed; they vegetate early in the 

 season, as it were of themselves, and provided the chilling rains and snows 

 be kept from the surface of the bed by the boarded cover, and the trenches 

 be kept full of leaves, haulm, or almost any kind of vegetable rubbish, the 

 plants will begin to grow in December. To keep the dung or other matter 

 m the linings from being chilled by the rain which falls on the covers, the 

 latter ought to have gutters to carry the drip to the ends of the beds ; a very 

 judicious practice, adopted in many places, in early forcing of cucumbers, to 

 keep the drip of the glass from chilling the linings. But asparagus and sea- 

 kale may be forced exceedingly well in this way, by covering both beds and 

 linings with abundance of loose litter. If the beds were on a sloping sur- 

 face, they might be regularly thatched, so as to throw off the whole of the 

 rain both from the beds and linings. To throw the rain off the beds into the 

 linings, a layer of litter or leaves, covered with reed mats, is almost as good 

 as boarded covers. It should not be forgotten, that loose litter does not 

 carry off the rain which falls upon it, but merely absorbs it ; and the evapora- 

 tion of this water from the litter afterwards, carries off a great deal of the 

 heat of the bed or body below. Xanthochjmus pictorius was fruited here, for 

 the first time in England, last spring ; the plant, we believe, had no particular 

 treatment. There is a handsome arcade of trellis-work over a principal 

 walk in the kitchen-garden, which is covered with a great many sorts of 

 apple trees, and when the trees are in fruit it is said to have an excellent 

 effect. The dwarf apple-trees along the borders are in part trained on a cast- 

 iron espalier rail(J??icj/e. of Gard., p. 1579.), and in part as spiral or globular 

 dwarfs. Mr. Duff's beds of American cranberries (Vol. I. p. 151.) are doing 

 well ; the English cranberry less so, from the supply of plants not having 

 been abundant when the beds were formed. Passiflora albida and Chian- 

 thod^ndrum ^jlatanifolium have flowered here, and the former now carried 

 several fruit. In the conservatory different species of Banksi« and Dryandra 

 make shoots from 3 to 6 ft. long in one season. The walks of this conser- 



