186 Management of tender Plants 



perhaps, those at Chatsworth, which, also, are excellently grown. 

 At both places, most of the finest specimens were growing in 

 large lumps of turfy peat, piled up, in a bluntly conical form, 

 6 in. to 1 ft. or more above the tops of the pots ; the roots of 

 the plants interlacing through the mass, and binding it firmly 

 together. 



Herefordshire^ January 14. 1840. 



Art. II. On propagating, and preserving through the Winter, tender 

 Plants adapted jbr being turned out into Flovoer-gardens during 

 Summer. By N. M. T. 



Our flower-gai'dens are now, during the summer months, in 

 many cases, almost exclusively decorated with exotics ; and too 

 much cannot be said in favour of a practice that enables them 

 to rival, for a time, the sun-lit scenes of happier climes, from 

 which we have lately received many plants so perfectly suited to 

 such a purpose, and so exquisitely lovely when displaying their 

 beauty in masses, that without them our gardens would be a 

 blank indeed. What, in all the range of floral beauty, un- 

 limited as it is, could compensate us for the loss of even that 

 single group, the matchless verbenas ? The duration of plants 

 used for this purpose, under the mode of culture this practice 

 has introduced, is only annual ; as they require to be propagated 

 in autumn or spring, produce their blossoms during the season, 

 and perish at its close. As they cannot be turned out with any 

 certainty of success until the season is far advanced, the small 

 plants require to be planted thick enough to cover the soil, and 

 produce an immediate effect. Thus a moderate-sized garden 

 requires several thousands of plants to furnish it annually, a 

 prospect that would have appalled even the best gai'deners of 

 yore ; but at the present day, where sufficient means are allowed, 

 the propagation of the plants is a matter of no difficulty. In 

 cuttings, put in during February or March, failures seldom 

 occur : when they do, they are generally the effect of too much 

 confinement, and not, as is often assumed, of too much water. 

 As a proof that cuttings when allowed plenty of air can hardly 

 be over-watered, see with what facility most sorts strike root in 

 water only. Plants are continually dissipating the moisture they 

 extract from the soil into the atmosphere that surrounds them : 

 they are, therefore, in constant action while the least difference 

 exists between the moisture of the soil and atmosphere ; and it 

 is only while thus employed that a plant can be said to be a 

 living thing, inaction being as incompatible with anything pos- 

 sessing vitality in the vegetable as in the animal world. There- 

 fore, plants shut up until soil, plant, and atmosphere are alike 



