3 8 MORE POT-POURRI 



and dividing, as well as thinning out, certainly seem 

 to me to give finer blooms. On the top of a low wall 

 dividing this garden from another portion of it were some 

 flower-boxes well filled with trailing and half-hardy plants, 

 brilliant in colour and easy to water and attend to ; and 

 the effect was very good, and might be adopted on those 

 dreary little walls that sometimes divide small villa gardens 

 from their neighbours. The evaporation from painted 

 wood is very much less than from flower-pots, and there 

 is no fear of their being thrown over by a high wind. 



Going about, I observe that next to pruning and 

 cutting back there is nothing people are so ignorant 

 about as watering, especially in dry weather. The 

 ordinary non-gardening mind seems to think that if a 

 thing looks blighted or faded or drooping, it is ' below par,' 

 and that water acts as the required tonic ; whereas it is 

 often that the dry weather has only hastened the period 

 of rest, and when that is the case nothing is so hopeless as 

 watering anything that is not in full growth. Consequently 

 in mixed borders, unless very carefully done, to a plant 

 that is coming into bud, watering and, above all, hosing 

 is best left alone ; and much watering in the summer is 

 very injurious to spring-flowering shrubs. At the same time 

 copious soaking once or twice a week is necessary very 

 often to keep newly planted things alive. Half-hardy 

 planted-out things, annuals, and plants lately moved from 

 the reserve garden, can safely be watered. In this Suffolk 

 garden all watering was done at four or five in the morn- 

 ing, the gardeners leaving off work at two in the afternoon. 

 This plan, I think, would often work very well both for 

 masters and men during the long hot days, but gardeners 

 seldom like it. 



