SHRUBBERIES AND FLOWER-GARDENS. ClIAP. 



first is well known in most gardens. It is a woody 

 plant, though its wood is of a succulent nature and is not 

 a match for our winters in the open air j it grows to the 

 height of four feet or more in good ground in England, 

 and much higher at the Cape of Good Hope or in the 

 south of Africa, where it is indigenous. It has large 

 downy soft leaves of a beautiful luxuriant green, placed 

 at the end of foot-stalks, and it bears its flowers in scarlet 

 bouquets, or bunches, at the end of foot-stalks longer 

 than those of the leaves. It will spread to a great width 

 when planted out, and in a good warm summer. I have 

 had it at Kensington full five feet over, and covered with 

 blossoms from the middle of June to the middle of 

 October. It is said to like a light rich mould best. Rich 

 mould it does like, but I never found it do otherwise than 

 well in the deepest and stiffest garden mould that 1 have 

 occupied, and I have occupied some of the stiffest that I 

 ever saw in my life. ' In its native country it likes sand, 

 because it has nothing else ; but I look upon it, that, a 

 geranium in African sand under an English sun, would 

 become a very poor thing indeed. Gravel suits it ill, as 

 do also the extremes of chalk or clay, but a good depth 

 of mould over a bed of either of these latter, with well- 

 rotted manure and good tillage, will make a very fine 

 geranium, and will keep it in blossom four months of 

 the year. As it is infalliby killed by hard frost, unless 

 most cautiously covered over with litter and mats, the 

 way to perpetuate it that I generally follow is this : in 

 July take some cuttings of young wood that is ripening, 

 and put them in separate pots of nice mould, observing 

 to have two joints below the earth and one above it. 

 Then plunge the pots up to their rims in a hot-bed of 



