Domestic Notices : — Ireland. 847 



about three miles from Belfast, latitude 54° 35' 42" N., must be peculiarly 

 favourable to gardening. I find many plants grow well here, which I have 

 observed in the Gardener's Magazine are spoken of as rare in other places % 

 for instance, Fuchsia coccinea, as bearing berries in a green-house, from 

 which young plants spring ; and then it is observed, it might perhaps be 

 treated as a hardy annual. My old plants ripen seed in the open ground, 

 and never get any protection, and I have them in the coldest situations. I 

 never thought of sowing the seed, as I find the cuttings grow as well as 

 those of the common willow. I cut some plants down to the ground about 

 January, and these cuttings I put very thickly together into any part of the 

 garden, and give them no care : almost every plant succeeds and flowers 

 that autumn. The broad-leaved myrtle I have as an edging as low as box, 

 and as hedges in my garden of all heights, from 6 in. to 12 ft. My 12-ft. 

 hedge is on a south wall. When Dr. Haliday came to this place twenty 

 years since, it was 2 ft. high. It has never had even a little straw laid over 

 the roots in winter, and it flowers beautifully. It is bushy from the ground 

 to the top of the wall, with which I always cut it even about April. In the 

 summer it shoots a foot and a half above the top of the wall : it is 5 ft. in 

 breadth from the bottom to the top, and spreads 3 ft. over the door-case on 

 one side. From this I have taken all my other plants, observing to cut oft' 

 a flowering branch, otherwise it is very long before they come into flower. 

 I always strike them in the open ground, and many have been put down at 

 Christmas ; in fact, I give them no more care than the Fuchsia. I have at 

 least forty plants now, and many in fine flower this day (Nov. 11.). The 

 narrow-leaved myrtle is also in the garden, and has twice flowered; it is 

 not protected. I cannot go to any great expense, but I try every plant I 

 can get a cutting of, and often succeed where many who take great care 

 and trouble do not. The snowberry I struck by a cutting in the open 

 ground, when the nurserymen were asking Is. for a plant. The white 

 double primrose is quite hardy here. Tigridia Ferraria I plant in the gar- 

 den in February ; its seeds are now quite ripe ; this winter I will leave 

 some roots in the ground : it seems so far to have changed its habit as to 

 open the flower at all times in the day ; it even did so at six in the evening 

 this year. Mirabilis longiflora stands the winter here well, and flowered 

 the year it was sown. Scarlet-flowered Cyrilla, sown in the garden, is now 

 in fine flower ; as are also a variety of pelargoniums and Cineraria, turned 

 out of the green-house to take their chance. The Althaea frutex flowers 

 well in many places here. I have a very small green-house, nearly all 

 glass, but with no artificial heat. I reared in it Crassula coccinea and 

 alba ; the seeds came up in a parcel of heath seeds from London (the latter 

 all died) : the crassulas flowered beautifully. My fine pelargoniums are 

 later in flowering, but are in general in better health, than where great heat 

 is used. The Madagascar periwinkle flowered from a cutting. My gar- 

 dener has also been successful in flowering the Amaryllis vittata in it : he 

 was laughed at for supposing it possible ; but the fourth year I had a fine 

 plant, the stem 2 ft. high, and five handsome flowers : the second year it 

 was not quite so fine. This year I have a second bulb from it, which I hope 

 will flower : one of the bulbs I have just looked at ; it has now a leaf a 

 foot long, owing, he supposes, to the experiment of not treating it as he 

 did at first. If it does flower, I shall send a communication to the Gar- 

 dener's Magazine. I know he does not give at any time any thing like the 

 quantity of water which some of your correspondents recommend; but he 

 says, not having heat, the plant does not require it. My green-house is 

 chiefly managed by him, and he is quite anxious to acquire information 

 relating to his profession, and very fond of it ; but, except in regard to the 

 vittata, every fact I state is from my own knowledge and experience. There 

 are now seven beds nearly blown of the scarlet Chinese rose, budded on 

 the 20th of July on the common double white rose; and I had the rose 

 unique, Tuscany, moss-white, and double yellow-flowered on the Chinese 



