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JOUBNAL OF HOBTICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ November 23, 1876. 



Firs Btill more fiercely ; but the Sycamores have completely 

 overpowered them, and in a lew years they will be gone, leav- 

 ing nothing but deciduous trees. Planters may seek to pro- 

 duce combinations of evergreen with deciduous trees, but such 

 combinations especially intermingled must not be looked upon 

 as permanent, though if arranged so that the deciduous trees 

 appear in the low or foreground with the evergreens at back 

 they will go on for generations increasing in size, age, and 

 beauty. Mixed up, as is the fashion, the deciduous trees wi'll 

 overpower the evergreens, driving them from the valley to 

 their home in the hills, where they can tower in grandeur 

 becoming those elevations which they so befittingly adorn. 



The claim of Conifers is great (none greater than the Larch, 

 which I shall have occasion to allude to again), and yet their 

 use in ornamental gardening is carried to such a pitch of 

 extravagance as to give a monotony of dark frowning forms 

 which need, I think, considerable modification by the introduc- 

 tion of lighter-foliaged deciduous trees and shrubs. — G. Abbey. 



HABDY ANNUALS FOR SPRING DECORATION. 



Having observed that these " charming simple flowers " are 

 considered worthy of attention, and having noticed a remark 

 that they are only grown for spring decoration in large gardens, 

 I desire to say that in at least one garden of moderate size they 

 have long been employed extensively. In my endeavours to 

 render the garden as attractive as possible, as well early in 

 the spring as late in the summer, I have found autumn-sown 

 annuals quite as indispensable as bedding Geraniums. These 

 annuals, too, have always attracted more attention than the 

 Geraniums, not only from those who might be regarded as having 

 a special fancy for annual flowers, but from ordinary visitors, 

 who could not resist expressing their admiration on seeing a 

 garden in April and May bright with flowers, when their own 

 beds were empty and cheerless. 



Without further expatiating on the charms of hardy annuals, 

 I will make the bold assertion that those who have not grown 

 them by sowing the seed in autumn and flowering the plants 

 in spring, or have not seen plants so grown by others, know 

 nothing of the beauty of this class of garden flowers. The 

 plan of sowing hardy annuals in the spring and leaving them 

 thickly in lines or clumps to struggle out their brief existence 

 as best they may, is not justice to them. As well may 

 Lettuce seed be similarly sown, and the plants be treated in 

 the same manner, and the practice be dignified as growing 

 Lettuces. An individual plant of, say, Silene pendula, Nemo- 

 phila insignis, or Convolvulus minor, requires quite as much 

 room to perfect itself as does a Lettuce plant ; yet while a 

 square foot of ground is generally afforded to one plant of the 

 latter.it is not by any means uncommon to find the same 

 amount of space considered sufficient for fifty or a hundred 

 plants of the former; and that is called growing annuals, and 

 annuals are termed weeds, rubbish, transient fly-a-ways, and 

 not deserving of a place in a garden. Judgment such as that 

 is a libel on the annuals. The judges themselves are the 

 criminals in denouncing the flowers which they first abused, 

 for instead of having assisted them to grow they have pre- 

 vented them from growing by the unnatural treatment to 

 which they have been subjected. 



It is the nature of hardy annuals to be sown in the autumn, 

 as much as it is the nature of Wheat to be Bown at that period. 

 3f Wheat is sown thickly late in the spring the crop is poor 

 and the grain Email, but if it is sown in the autumn thinly it 

 produces masBive heads of " golden grain." So with annuals ; 

 if the seed is sown thickly in the spring and the plants are 

 untended they flower prematurely, and the flowers are puny 

 and the plants miserable — quite unworthy of a place in the 

 garden ; but if the seed is sown in the autumn, and the plants 

 are properly thinned and cared for, then is the result indeed 

 different, for the plants instead of being puny become luxu- 

 riant, and their beauty instead of being transient is lasting — 

 continuing often longer than is required, but always long 

 enough to well reward for the rational cultural attention that 

 has been bsBtowed on them. 



I have sown seeds of Convolvulus minor in September — the 

 rich dark variety known as tricolor — tended the plants through 

 the winter, planted them in a rich and well-trenched bed in 

 March, and they have commenced flowering in May, and have 

 continued until October, most of the time presenting a glow 

 of colour unequalled by any other bed of flowers of the same 

 hue in the garden. That is an extreme case, and annuals are 

 not usually required to flower nearly so long as that. Tho 



beds are required for Geraniums, carpet bedding, or sub- 

 tropical plants. The two last modes of decoration are now 

 popular, and neither system can be commenced with until the 

 first or second week in June, especially when Alternantheras 

 must form a considerable part of the carpet-bedding arrange- 

 ments. Beds of bare soil are endurable until May, but from 

 the commencement of that month until the summer days and 

 nights of June come in every day seems a week, so blank and 

 dreary is the garden. Flowers you may find in fields and 

 woods, in lanes and in hedgerows, on the mountain side and 

 the streamlet's banks ; but the flower garden excepting the 

 Dairies on the lawn is flowerlese. But it need not be so dreary, 

 for throughout May it may be in its very brightest and most 

 cheerful garb with annuals, and which are not only charming 

 but accommodating, and will step out of the way just in time 

 for the carpet bedders and 6ubtropicals. Thus with tho 

 judicious use of annuals judiciously grown, a garden maybe 

 made to possess a double season of beauty, and with much 

 less than a double outlay of cost and labour. 



It is only right, however, to say that when autumn-sown 

 annuals are grown some additional labour is incurred and 

 must be provided if the plants are to be grown well, and if 

 they cannot have justice done to them it is better not to at- 

 tempt growing them at all. Yet when the labour is provided, 

 and the beds are produced in good order, few can begrudge 

 their cost, and fewer can ignore their beauty. 



Wbo can inspect close pink masses of Saponaria calabrica, 

 especially when surrounded with the white variety, the 

 sprightly blue of Nemophila insignis, the richer hue of Yenus's 

 Looking-glass, the yellow of Lasthenia californiea and Lim- 

 nanthes Donglasii, and not admire them, to say nothing of 

 those annuals of bolder growth— the Clarkias, Yiscarias, Lark- 

 spurs, &c. ? All these and many others are much finer when 

 sown in autumn than when sown in spring. 



This, however, is not the time for sowing hardy annuals. 

 On the contrary, plants of Silenes and Forget-me-nots ought 

 now to be 6 inches across, and those of the others should be 

 well above ground. But if this is not the time for sowing the 

 seed, it is the time for thinning the plants. Without proper 

 and timely thinning, plants of hardy annuals- cannot be ex- 

 pected to endure the winter's severity. It is the thinning-out 

 of the plants that makes them hardy; if allowed to grow thickly 

 together they become tender. A small solitary plant of Ground- 

 sel or any other indigenous weed will pass the winter un- 

 injured, but a crowded group of these weeds made tender by 

 th3 crowding cannot resist the severity of the weather. It is 

 precisely the same with hardy annual flowers, which are hardy 

 or tender according to the treatment that is given them. 

 Every plant should be clear of its neighbour, then will its 

 tissue become hardened and its habit be sturdy, enabling it to 

 pass with safety our ordinary winters. Yet should the frost 

 be extremely severe and no snow on the ground and plants, a 

 little protection may be necessary, but the work of lightly 

 laying over the beds dry tops of Asparagus (minus the seeds), 

 or a few branches of evergreens is only the work of a few 

 minutes, and will not be begrudged when success is attained. 



Then how charming are hardy annuals when flowering in 

 pots in the earliest days of spring ! I cannot conceive, for 

 instance, how plants of Nemophila insignis can be dispensed 

 with for conservatory fringes, for baskets, stands, and other 

 ornamental contrivances which gardeners are expected to 

 furnish with flowers. Formal upright flowers we have in 

 plenty, such as bulbs, Azaleas, Cinerarias, &c, but drooping 

 plants are indispensable for the complete decoration of a con- 

 servatory or room, and these are afforded by trailing annuals. 

 All the care these plants require is a frame in which to pass 

 the winter, and a shelf near the glass to assist them in un- 

 folding their flowers in the spring. With this little care and 

 copious supplies of manure water plants are produced whioh 

 are totally distinct from all surrounding them, and which sur- 

 prise those seeing tbem for the firet time, not only by their 

 inherent beauty, but by their lasting properties. 



Because I have seen hardy annuals so greatly admired in 

 the spring, both in pots and in beds, I have always endeavoured 

 to provide them ; and because their culture is within the means 

 of almost everyone having a garden that I say a word in favour 

 of these " charming simple flowers."— A Nobthebn Gardeker. 



DIOSPYROS KAKI. 

 The readers of the Journal who were thinkiDg of investing 

 half a guinea in the purchase of a small speoimen of this plant 



