26 MORE POT-POURRI 



The bulb should be very rarely re-potted and well 

 watered in its growing state. I am always hearing that 

 people lose their plants; this is probably from the 

 gardener's over-care and keeping them too warm and 

 wet through the winter. I am going to try them out of 

 doors next year, as Mr. Eobinson recommends, now that 

 I have plenty of offsets, but I confess I have never seen 

 them doing well in England out of doors. They probably 

 do not fear cold, as I saw many in full flower on cottage 

 window-sills in Norway. 



The west sides of rockeries are often very dull, 

 especially in autumn. I find Origanum hybridum is a 

 charming, interesting, curious little plant that flowers 

 freely in a dry place in August and September. It is 

 almost exactly the same as the old 0. dictamnus figured 

 in vol. xix. of Curtis's 'Botanical Magazine.' Curtis 

 says : ' Turner, whose Herbal was printed in 1568, 

 writes thus concerning it : "I have seen it growynge in 

 England in Master Eiches gardin naturally, but it 

 groweth nowhere ellis that I know of saving only in 

 Candy." ' This is rather a nice way of telling us where 

 the plant comes from. It seems easy of cultivation, and 

 worth growing. Caryopteris macranthe is a little blue 

 dwarf shrub that I have hardly ever seen anywhere, but 

 which I grow and increase here quite easily, and find it 

 very attractive. It wants a dry situation, and flowers 

 better if cut back after flowering. It should be fed with 

 a little mulching and watering when it comes into bud. 

 I increase it easily from cuttings in spring. 



As time goes on I become fonder and fonder of the 

 generally abused Polygonums. Mr. Eobinson, in his latest 

 edition of ' The English Flower Garden,' speaks of them also 

 with much favour, and gives a splendid list of the varieties ; 

 but even he does not lay stress enough upon what entirely 

 different plants they become if sufficiently thinned out and 



