GREENHOUSE AND HOTHOUSE FLOWERS 173 



The following are excellent sorts, providing each of these 

 requirements. Doubles: Champion of the World, Phenomenal, 

 White Phenomenal, and Miss Lucy Finnis. Singles: Beauty of 

 Trowbridge, Countess of Aberdeen, Lye's Excelsior, and Rose of 

 Castile. 



Gardenia. Everybody knows this beautiful, pure white, highly 

 perfumed flower, but the partiality of the plant for a warm house 

 debars many people from growing it. While not absolutely 

 fastidious, it asks for certain requirements to be met. It enjoys 

 a comfortable degree of heat, such as that of a stove, and abundance 

 of atmospheric moisture. It likes a free root run, and on this 

 account often does better when planted out than when kept in 

 a pot. At the same time, if young plants are raised every year 

 (a plan adopted by many successful growers in preference to 

 keeping old plants from year to year), they succeed admirably in 

 six-inch pots. While it will grow in the normal mixture, it prefers 

 peat tcr leaf-mould, and consequently the former may be added 

 to the compost instead of the latter. Lastly, it needs to be kept 

 quite free from mealy-bug. Cuttings made of the young shoots 

 strike readily in January if placed in bottom heat. 



Geranium (Zonal Pelargonium}. Once the reigning queen of 

 the flower garden, the cheerful Zonal has declined in favour with 

 a large section of garden lovers ; but even if we dispense with it 

 in the flower garden we need not do without it under glass. To 

 make an order for entire expulsion would mean depriving ourselves 

 of a plant that may be had in full bloom right through the dull 

 days of winter, and so lighten up our greenhouses and conservatories 

 at a. period when they might otherwise be bare. In spite of the 

 hard things that are said about the Zonal Geranium by flower 

 gardeners of the modern artistic school, it is not by any means 

 a plant to be condemned indiscriminately. In no plant grown do 

 we get a more marked persistency of flowering, and more brilliant 

 and varied colours. It will bloom at midwinter as readily as at 



