December 20, 1877. ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



471 



16. Golden Button. — Small flower of a rich candy yellow j 

 •centre tipped red. Very floriferoug. Flowers from September 

 to December. Hardy and desirable. 



17. Delphine Caboche. — Small flowers of a light reddish 

 mauve colour. Blooms from August to December. 



18. Little Bob. — Small flowers produced in great numbers, 

 ■of a dark crimson oolour. Very dwarf. 



19. Cassy. — Small flowers of a pink and white colour. 

 Bloomed in October. Habit good. 



20. Chromatella. — Orange, tipped red. Bloomed in October. 

 Small flowers. 



21. Ann Mitchell. — Bloomed in October. Flowers small, of 

 a reddish brown colour. Habit good. 



22. Mrs. Atkinson. — White, shaded pink. Bloomed in Oc- 

 tober. 



23. La Vogue. — Small yellow flowers ; centre orange. 

 Bloomed November 10th. 



24. Esther Emans. — Bloomed in November, of a dark pink 

 ■colour. 



25. Salamon. — Bloomed November 7th. Dark rosy carmine. 

 Very pretty indeed. 



26. Argentine. — Small pure white flowers. This should 

 •bloom in September. 



27. Jane Elisabeth. — Flowers of the button size, of a pale 

 •sulphur colour. This should bloom in September. 



28. Lizzie Holmes — Yellow. Should bloom in September. 



29. General Ganrobert. — Button Bhape ; colour pure yellow. 

 Bloomed October 25th. 



30. Mrs. Hutt. — Reddish brown ; erect habit. Bloomed 

 'November 5th. 



The above thirty may all be called early-blooming varieties 

 for the garden borders. The latest of them will bloom, in a 

 good season, not later than the beginning of October. Most 

 of them have flowers of a good size, and are handsome, Bhowy, 

 and of compact habit. They are, too, of easy culture, and 

 they cannot fail to make our borders very gay and attractive 

 during the months of September and October, and, if the 

 weather should be favourable, to the end of November. 

 ■ I hope to still further increase and improve my collection. 

 2 shall be pleased to exchange cuttings with anyone or to know 

 where other varieties are to be parohased. — F. Fkeehan, 

 Middleton Vicarage, Leeds. 



AN AMATEUR'S GARDEN AND GREENHOUSE. 



I have much pleasure in contributing to the Journal a few 

 ■notes on my garden and greenhouse experience. Before, how- 

 ever, relating my successes and failures (as a beginner I of 

 course had Borne of the latter, and gladly accepted them be- 

 cause they taught me how to do things better in future) I 

 ought, perhaps, to state that my garden is not a large one, yet 

 it is of such a size as to keep me fully employed in all my 

 spare time, of which friends tell me I have plenty ; but then 

 I riBe very early in the morning, which is a great thing. For 

 gardening, like other work, there is no time so valuable and 

 enjoyable as the early morn. 



I have no gardener living on my premises. I employ one to 

 do some of the very rough outdoor work and to keep the 

 lawns mowed ; but I like to do without him as much as 

 possible, for the reason that apparently very few of the hired 

 men of this locality are competent gardeners. With the ex- 

 ception named I may say that I do all my own work both in 

 and out of doors. Nearly all persons are fond of flowers, but 

 there are some amorg them who do not care to do any work 

 tin order to produce them — they like to have them made like 

 many other things, and look at them without any trouble to 

 •themselves. To my mind, in acting thus the real pleasure of 

 having flowers in our gardens and conservatories is lost, and, 

 speaking for myself, I certainly prefer to rear them, watch 

 them, and attend to them, and so have all the pleasures and 

 delight appertaining to floriculture. In this delightful pur- 

 suit I regret to say I have not had a very long experience. 



Until about two years back I was living in town, and there 

 much gardening cannot be done ; still I had a friend in the 

 country who would send me annually a large hamper of bed- 

 ding plants, and with these I made my " town garden" look 

 cheerful. When I had left town for my present residence I 

 gladly accepted another hamper of plants from my friend for 

 the first summer, but I felt that, having now a good garden 

 and pure air, that was not, as our brethren across the Atlantic 

 term it, the " 0. K." thing to do. The plants so sent me were 

 not now sufficient for me; my love for flowers was increasing, 



and I muBt have more of them. Meantime in the spring I 

 had amused myself by making a couple of garden frames in 

 which to raise seedling plants. Although late I sowed some 

 Pyrethrum, Ten-week Stock, Indian Pink, Phlox Drummondi, 

 Balsam, and others : theBe with the contents of the hamper 

 afforded me in due season a good display of flowers ; but my 

 chief flowers during the summer and autumn were and always 

 will be Roses, the queen of flowers. Of these I have nearly 

 a hundred standards and sundry climbers against walls and 

 fences. The standards are planted on either side of the paths, 

 thus forming avenues ; they are of a great variety, and when 

 in the months of June and July all are in full bloom they are 

 a very pleasing sight indeed. 



The soil here is not a good one for Roses, being of a very 

 light character ; still with a good mulching of old stable 

 manure in the autumn and an occasional watering with liquid 

 manure when fresh growth commences in the spring and 

 throughout the summer, with oareful pruning and tlie heads 

 frequently played upon with clear water through the garden 

 hose to keep off green fly, I have not only had some excellent 

 blooms, but a profusion of them. Taking them all round 

 they gave me great satisfaction. The following are a few 

 which, perhaps, did the best — viz., Jules Margottin, Due de 

 Cazes, Comtesse de Chabrillant, Duke of Edinburgh, John 

 Hopper, Exposition de Brie, Alfred Colomb, Gloire de Dijon, 

 General Jacqueminot, Comlesse d'Oxford, Victor Verdier, 

 Madame Charles Wood, Madame Jules Margottin, Baronne de 

 Rothschild, &a. 



Jhese notes comprise my doings, shortly given, for the first 

 year of my gardening ; it is purely that of an amateur, and 

 though from the nature of the plants I possessed this year no 

 great skill was necessary for their well-being, they, notwith- 

 standing, required considerable attention in order to make the 

 best of them. The great stumbling-block to my hobby for 

 flowers, and indeed gardening generally, was that I had no 

 place in which to preserve old plants and to propagate for 

 next year's display. This was a great trouble to me. My 

 small garden frames which I had made were all V9ry well to 

 raise a few plants from seeds, but that did not cover my am- 

 bition. I must have a greenhouse somehow or other. I had 

 taken my dwelling-house only for a few years, time was fleeing 

 fast, and I did not care to go to the expense of erecting a 

 greenhouse wholly myself, for the reason that in a portable 

 house there is not that facility for heating as in a permanent 

 fixture, therefore I placed myself in communication with my 

 landlady's representative, and after several months' delay we 

 came to terms, which I need not here particularise. This 

 brings me to late in October; meantime there were great 

 doubts as to the success of my negotiation, and I felt some- 

 what reluctant to make any serious preparation for stocking a 

 hoUBe. However, I struck some ten to twelve dozen zonal 

 Pelargoniums, in the manner so often laid down in these pages, 

 in anticipation of a house being ultimately erected. It was in 

 due course completed, but I think I had better defer my doings 

 therein for publication in your Journal on some later occasion. 

 — L. Hakemah. 



GLADIOLI. 



I was interested in your correspondent's notes about Gladioli 

 on page 451, because he is in the same position as I was my- 

 self at one time. He seems to believe that there is disease 

 inherent in the Gladioli. 1 freely admit that up to the pre- 

 sent year I also laboured under the impression that the mys- 

 terious dying-away of the Gladioli was attributable to disease; 

 but having last spring improved my system of culture by 

 thoroughly preparing a bed of soil and by what I saw at the 

 Messrs. Kelway's nurserieB last September, where there was 

 not the slightest symptom of disease amongst the hundreds 

 of thousands of corms which they grow spread over six acres 

 of land, and the perfect immunity from any losses in my own 

 case when I gave them the soil that suited them, quite satisfies 

 me that there is no real disease. The mysterious losses so 

 common in them arise, I believe, solely from an unsuitable 

 soil or position or an insufficiency of water. For several years 

 I grew the Gladioli in the common soil of the garden here 

 and in beds with a portion of the soil removed and good soil 

 added to supply its place; but I met with indifferent success. 

 At last I determined to make one more effort, and I planted 

 them in a well-drained warm border with 2 fett of good loamy 

 rich soil, and the result was all that I could desire. In this 

 spot I planted over three hundred corms last spring, and I 



