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AUGUST 



A Horticultural Show in August The old Chelsea Physic Garden 

 Towns out of season Flat-hunting in London Overcrowding 

 flats Marble better than tiles Curtains and blinds A long 

 note on girls and young women. 



August 9th. For the first time in my life I went to a 

 Horticultural Society Show at the Drill Hall, Westminster, 

 in August. The interest centred chiefly in the new hardy 

 Water Lilies which everyone with small ponds or lakes 

 ought to try and cultivate, I think. There were a few 

 new Lilies that I had never seen before ; but what 

 particularly attracted my attention was an exceedingly 

 good strain of my favourite Campanula pyramidalis, 

 exhibited by the Syon House gardener, and flowered 

 under glass. He afterwards gave me an interesting 

 account of how he cultivates them, which I quote : 



' I am glad you liked the Campanulas, but I am sorry 

 they were not quite as good as some I have shown in 

 previous years, as we forced some of the plants, and they 

 do not like much heat. There is no special way of 

 cultivating the plants. Those you saw were sown early 

 in April '97 in pans in a cold frame, and pricked off end 

 of May into boxes, potted up six weeks later into forty- 

 eight pots, singly. Up to this they had been grown in a 

 cold frame, but from July till October they were stood 

 outside on ashes, but well watered. In winter we place 

 rough boards round these, or stand in cold frames. Too 

 much moisture is worse than frost, and very little water 



