90 PAJIILTAR garden FLOirERS. 



growers eveiy year for sale for that purpose. But the 

 stateinent should he repeated that all the hydrangeas are 

 hardy in what may be called the most fa.vourable districts 

 n\ the British Isles, say in England everywhere south of 

 the Trent, and along the whole western sea-board from 

 the Land's End to the shores of Loch Fyne. Ireland, 

 from Kerry across diagonally to Dowd, will generally 

 be found to suit the hydrangea; and of the Channel 

 Islands there need be nothing said, because hydrangeas, 

 escallonias, myrtles, and shrubby veronicas love a humid 

 atmosphere and an equable temperature, the extreme of 

 which, downward, does not often touch the freezinsr- 

 point. 



Now some one will say that generalities are insufficient. 

 Very well. If you will inquire in the village of Stoke 

 Newington, where the climate is very stiff for a northern 

 suburb of London, and the soil is a stiff damp clay, 

 you may hear of a plant of llijdraiigea Jiortensis that has 

 stood in an open front garden for some fifteen years, 

 and everv summer produces hundreds of immense heads 

 of flowers, spreading over a space that may be roughly 

 described as about as large as an average breakfast-jiarlour. 

 It is l:)ut a short time since we saw in Broadwater, near 

 Worthing, a gigantic plant of Kydrangea japon'ica, which 

 is a peculiar plant in showing a mixture of perfect and 

 imperfect flowers, but always a lieauty, and commonly 

 regarded as more tender than H. horteniih. The plant 

 was taller than a man, and broader than any man could 

 measure b}' the outstretch of his arms, but the ])eople 

 there thought it nothing remai'kable, and suggested that 

 many more such might be found. To close this para- 

 gra])h it will be well to say that the hydrangea accommo- 



