SEPTEMBER 173 



from the outside of the frame, and fill up the space with 

 leaves or manure. We find nitrate of soda useful for 

 many things, and especially so for Violets. For Czars 

 and other outdoor Violets it is useful to cut a ditch 

 running north and south, and plant both banks with 

 young runners of Violets in April. The position is more 

 natural to the plants than on the flat ground, and they 

 are shaded during part of each day ; this makes a great 

 difference to so many plants. Ophiopogon spicatus is a 

 small herbaceous plant which no one would grow merely 

 for its unshowy little lilac flower, which appears late in 

 the autumn, but it is well worth growing in every 

 garden, because its pretty foliage is in its prime about 

 December and January, and is most useful for mixing 

 with small greenhouse flowers. 



September 25th. The plants moved from the reserve 

 garden in July have done very well. The Michaelmas 

 Daisies are unusually good. There are a great many 

 dwarf kinds, very suitable for small gardens. Little 

 shapely trees covered with starry white or lilac flowers 

 are, I suppose, to be got anywhere now; mine came 

 from my neighbour, Mr. Barr, who has a grand collec- 

 tion. I can only repeat what I said before, how easily 

 these plants can be divided and replanted in spring, and 

 in large and roomy places a Michaelmas Daisy garden 

 can be made for the late months. Boltonia corymbosa is 

 a charming plant, more restrained than the Michaelmas 

 Daisy, and better suited to small gardens. It is very 

 pretty picked, but its fault is that it comes in rather 

 early. 



The wet weather has suited one of the handsomest 

 of autumn flowers, the tall white Pyrethrum. Salvias do 

 well here, but they like it dry and hot, and are not so good 

 as usual this year, though flowering well now. S. patens, 

 the dark-blue, and S. splendens, the beautiful scarlet one, 



