POPULAR GARDENING. 



February, 



Winter Aconite or Eranthis. 



Flower that foreteil'st a spring thou ne'er shalt set' 



Yet sniiiest still upon thy wintry day. 



Content with the joy -giving destiny. 



Nor envying fairer llowers thy festal May. — 



O golden-fhalieed Aconite: 1*11 la.y 



To heart the lesson that thou teaehest me: 



1. too, contented with m.y times will be, 



And still a placid aspect will display 



In tempest-troubled seasons,— nor repine 



That others, coming after, shall enjo.y 



-\ calmer day, a sunnier sky than mine: 



To speed the present, be my sweet emplo.y : 



To cast into a storaiy world my mite 



Of cheer, like thee, gloom -gilding Aconite! 



— Thomns Nofh 



What They Say. 



The Red Rose sa.vs, " Be sweet," 

 And the Lil.y bids, " Be pure; '' 

 The hardy, brave Chrysautheraum. 

 " Be patient and endure." 

 The Violet whispers " Give, 

 Nor gioidge, nor count the cost; " 

 The Woodbine, " Keep on blossoming. 

 In spite of chill or frost." 



-Phil'a Call. 



More sun, more flowers. 



There is a double Oxalis. 



Patronize our adyertisers. 



A beautiful catalogue crop. 



Overshaded houses are unhealthy. 



Abutilons come readily from seed. 



The Fuchsia is a Tropical-American. 



February is a good time to subscribe. 



The Medlar Tree is not a meddler iu fact. 



Subscriptiona may begin with any mouth. 



Violet is the name of a Missouri Post-office. 



Some one call.s the Snowdrops, "Fair maids of 

 February." 



Thank you ! To our many friends who have 

 sent iu clubs. 



Success with Smilax as a house plant is by 

 no means uniform. 



The plural of Forget-me-not is forget-us-uot, 

 said one little girl. 



The catalogues, on the whole, are a very in- 

 structive literature. 



The Rose of Jericho is not a Rose ; botanicaUy 

 it is nearer a cabbage. 



Cranberries— 90il,UOO bushels, is the latest esti- 

 mate for the ci-op of 188.5. 



In looking up a list of late-flowering annuals 

 don"t forget the Godetias. 



Plants do Shoot. A gardener advertises Roses 

 " well I'ooted, many shooted." 



Looks as if Anthuriums could never be 

 i^couuted on as window plants. 



Should Horticulture receive State recogni- 

 tion ! is a pi'e.sent question iu England. 



Children love the beautUul ; let them engage 

 iu the innocent pastime of light gardening. 



Iron-plate staging for hot-houses is in use in 

 Laing & C'o's nurseries, London. Thej- are in- 

 destructible, of course. 



The charming, but rare Maiden Hair Fern, 

 Adiantuin Fiirleijensis is propagated by divi- 

 sion and not from spores. 



A subscriber truthfully claims that florists, 

 as a class, pa5' too Uttle attention to the cor- 

 rect laljelliug of plants. 



Washing the leaves of a plant, like washing 

 the face of a child, helps wonderfully for good 

 looks and general sweetness. 



" Oh how hard is my lot I " groaned Tom, as 

 he laid aside pick and spade, after half an hour's 

 work in fineing up the surface. 



The secret at the bottom of growing the 

 common Maiden Hair Fern, Adiantum cunen- 

 tnin, is high heat and much moisture. 



Do you, kind reader, take a good gardening 

 I^aper : If not, why not, when only 6U cents 

 will bring this one every month for a year. 



The young folks are sending in manj- clubs 

 to this paper. They find the work of securing 

 subscribers easy, and of course it is pleasant. 



Oranges must soon be scarcer. Mr. Ives, of 

 the Finritla Fntit Kvchanyt', puts the loss by 

 frosts to this fruit in January at one millon 

 dollars. 



Sun heat on plants and flowers seems to start 

 them up like magic. Sun heat is life to plants. 

 A continuous high artificial heat, without siui- 

 shine, is death to them. 



A Hint to Growers. It woiUd be better for 

 you, for dealers and for consumers alike — if 

 one-half or more of the present varieties, in all 

 departments, were weeded out. 



Look out I One introducer of a new potato 

 is Just that anxious to have them look well and 

 sell at a fancy price that it is said, he has col- 

 ored those he exhibits, artificially. 



We enjoy this being hit with Clubs, greatly, 

 and, what's cm-ious about it is, that the more 

 we are hit the pleasauter is the sensation. So 

 go in, and we'll stand the consequences. 



Among Palms, which a writer to a gardening 

 paper tinds the best for window cultiu-e,are the 

 Fan Paliu, Lataniii boidhoiiira, (figured last 

 month) , and Kentia AustraUs and Baknoreana. 

 Every issue of tliis jjaper is complete in itself, 

 so just arrange yourself in the ranks of the 

 50,000 subscribers to be reached b\- the end of 

 the year, iu anj' mouth. Only don't defer it 

 until forgotten. 



A new insect, some relative of the turnip fly, 

 sa3-s Prof. Riley, turns up as a troubler of the 

 Smilax. Tobacco smoke seems not to kill it, 

 as it does the ordinary Aphis, but insect pow- 

 der is a good remedy. 



A Nation of Planters. It is said that in Spain 

 an old custom among the countrj- people, is 

 never to eat fruit out of doors without plant- 

 ing the seed. The roads are lined with trees 

 whose fruit is free to all. 



Fumigating the apartments where plants are 

 grown, we suppose, will always be the main 

 reliance for killing plant lice. An utensil for 

 doing this neatl3', effectually, safely, is described 

 in our advertising columns. 



The best blue hardy annual we have is un- 

 questionably the Dwarf Morning Glory, Con- 

 volvulus mino}-. It makes an effective small 

 bed or an edging to a large one. The seed may 

 be sown where it is to flower. 



Cyclamens are particular as to watering. 

 They suft'er quickl}' from being too dry, and 

 just as quickly from too much wetness. Many 

 of these plants die annually from lack of free 

 drainage, which causes a water-logged soil. 



Grass under Trees. The Gur(:lriu'i\s Monthly 

 advises a correspondent to sow the English 

 Sheep Grass, Festuca orina, and the Flat-stem- 

 medBlue Grass, Foil comp/csso, here. We would 

 add another to the list as good — the Creeping 

 Bent Grass, Aijrosfis sfolotiifi'rti. 



Plant trees and shrubs, for they serve to 

 purify both the earth and the air : the former 

 by sucking up unwholsome organic matter, the 

 latter by absorbing carbonic acid and return 

 iug life-giving ox3'gen. But don't plant, trees 

 especially, too thick, or too close to the house. 



When Europeans send out a new plant, thej' 

 are almost sure to hang a long name to it. We 

 often meet worse cases than that found in the 

 excellent new Rose, William Francis Bennett. 

 But even this is too long for American notions. 

 Let us all drop the first two-thirds. Bennett 

 alone answers better. 



We place our love for the Hybrid Perpetual 

 Roses second to no one else's, but \'et we do 



think there is too great a tendency towards 

 elbowing out the old-fashioned Summer Roses 

 and Prairie Climbers, that this newer class may 

 be given more place. We say, give all classes 

 a chance, according as the5' deserve. 



Slow; that's all ! Many a pot in which Mau- 

 randia, Caima, ArcUsia or other slow-starting 

 seeds have been sown has had the soil turned 

 out, in the belief that the seeds were dead, 

 when a few weeks longer of waiting would 

 have found the plants coming through all right. 

 It may take several months time in all. 



The bothersome, white-complexioned. Meal}- 

 bug belongs to the same family as the red 

 Cochineal insect, from which the Cochineal dye 

 is obtained. We draw the color line here in 

 favor of the red-skin, every time. Brush the 

 pale-face away whenever one shows up on a 

 plant. Not safe company to have around. 



A New Insectcide. In France, tons of bisul- 

 phide of carbon are used in the vineyai-ds to 

 check the ravages of the Phylloxera, with good 

 results. What is good against that louse ought 

 to answer for destroj'ing many other insects. 

 The objection to this di-ug on pot plants is, its 

 odei' is offensive. Don't forget to trj' it in the 

 garden, though. 



We have received at this office Mr. J. H. 

 Tryon's ' ' Practical Treatise on Grape Culture, 

 with Instructions How to Prune and Train the 

 Vine. " Perhaps the greatest merit of this prac- 

 tical essay is its brevity, and yet Mr. T. man- 

 ages to put a good deal of the " How to do it " 

 in the dozen well-filleii pages. His address is 

 Willoughby, Ohio. 



Our clerks have had an unusually busy time 

 during the last month, entering the new sub- 

 scribers received. But they had been pretty 

 well drilled for it, and knew just what to ex- 

 pect. The .50,0(XI subscribers we are working 

 towards: readers, club agents, publishers, all, 

 vrill take some work to handle, but we are 

 ready; so, forward, all I 



Pots Arranged for Propagating.— See opposite page. 



Too bad: Our young friend Angelina has, 

 with sorrow, thrown up learning to paint floral 

 subjects. We cannot think this was wise, and 

 j-et, on the face, the case does look bad enough. 

 An acquaintance of hers has made the trouble 

 by mistaking her last group of yellow Pansies 

 for Bluebells. We tell Angelina that we think 

 her friend is color blind. 



To Subscribers. We know that some friends 

 of }-ours would like to take Popular Garden- 

 IN(;, if they knew how useful, beautiful and 

 cheap a paper it is. So if you wiU send in the 

 names of any such, we will gladly mail to each 

 a paper. We would also appreciate very 

 greatly any direct personal work you might 

 do in introducing the paper to others. A new- 

 paper needs a good deal of this kind of help, to 

 be sure. 



Josh Billings used to say ; ■ ' I don't care how 

 much people talk if the}- will only saj" it in a 

 phew words. " On that point we agree exactly 

 with the lamented philosopher. It is the one 

 aim of Popular Gardening to not oidy give 

 sound instruction on many subjects connected 

 with the gardens of the people, but to say it iu 

 a few plain words. No hunting for a needle in 

 a straw heap here. It beats all, how some 

 writers for papers can spread out ' ' talk "' over 



