410 Bedford Lodge, Camden Hill. 



Little difficulty will arise in procuring and preserving the 

 plants enumerated in the foregoing list. Many of them are 

 hardy perennial herbaceous plants ; and most of the others, 

 which are annual, will, if allowed to stand to ripen their seeds, 

 sow themselves. The kinds which will require most practical 

 knowledge are those which are generally termed green-house 

 plants; but which are so hardy as to produce as splendid a show 

 in our flower-gardens during the summer months, as they would 

 do if they were in their native countries. As it is with this latter 

 class of plants that we have most to do in filling flower-gardens 

 during summer, it will here be my object to show how they may be 

 preserved during winter, without the aid of green-houses. The 

 pits in which such plants should be kept, will require to have 

 their walls of 14-inch brickwork, and pigeon-holed; with tiles 

 half-inch thick, set on edge, 2 in. from the wall inside, to be 

 carried as high as the pigeon-holes; in which small apertures 

 may be left, in order that a little steam may be admitted into the 

 pit, from dung linings or dead leaves, if necessary : but no heat 

 from dung linings will be required, except in the most severe 

 weather, and then only just sufficient to keep out the frost. The 

 heat of the dung or leaves, applied to the outside of the walls, 

 will readily penetrate into the pit, having nothing to oppose it 

 but the thin tiles set on edge. September will be quite soon 

 enough to begin putting in cuttings. The soil in which they 

 are to be inserted should consist of equal portions of peat 

 earth and silver sand ; and those of them that are subject to 

 damp off may have a greater proportion of the sand. The pots 

 or pans in which the cuttings are put should be well drained ; 

 because it was only by having the wood of the cuttings tho- 

 roughly matured, that I was enabled to preserve such plants in 

 pits during the intense frost that we had in the winter just past 

 (1837—8) ; and, for the same reason, I would recommend that 

 no shading should be used while the cuttings are rooting, but 

 that they should be kept sufficiently near the glass to accelerate 

 their rooting, and yet not so close as to occasion their flagging; 

 which distance must, of course, be regulated by the degree of 

 obliquity at which the sun's rays strike the glass. If the lights, 

 as well as the frames, were placed more vertically than usual, in 

 the spring of the year, when the sun's rays are oblique, the 

 cuttings might be potted oflT as soon as the very intense frost 

 was past ; which M'ould prevent their damping off, and at the 

 same time forward them for planting out in the flower-garden. 



Bedford Lodge, June, 1838. 



[We have visited this garden several times during the past 

 year, and can bear testimony to the very excellent manner in 

 which it is managed by Mr. Caie: and, as a result, to the bril- 



