THE FLOWEE-GAEDEN. I'l 



be brought from the reserve ground and laid down on a bed in the 

 flower-garden when just coming into flower, and taken back again to 

 make room for other plants, when they have gone out of flower. 



Day lily. — ^Handsome perennial plants, with yellow or copper-colored 

 flowers. They are quite hardy, and only require a moist soil and a 

 shady situation. They are propagated by dividing the roots. 



The Furze, — An erect evergreen shrub, with yellow flowers, which are 

 produced nearly all the year. The common kind, in favorable situations, 

 will grow ten feet high. 



Geum. — Rosaceoe — .Avens or Herh Bennet. — Perennial plants, natives of 

 Europe and America, with very, handsome flowers. O. Quellyon, Swt. 

 (O. coccineum, Bot. Reg.), is a splendid plant, a native of Chili, with 

 large, orange-scarlet flowers. All the species are hardy, and require a 

 light, rich soil ; they are propagated by seeds, or by dividing the roots. 

 Some of the species are now called Sieversia; the seed-vessels of Geum 

 being hooked, and those of Sieversia ending in a straight, feathery 

 point. 



The Geranium wants hardiness only to make it the finest flower-plant 

 of which I have any knowledge. Some give us flower with little or no 

 leaf; others have beauty of leaf as well as of flower, but give us no 

 fragrance ; others, hke the rose, give us this added to beauty of flower 

 and of leaf, but give us them only for a part of the year. But the 

 geranium has beautiful leaf, beautiful flower, fragrant smell from leaf as 

 well as from flower, and these it has in never-ceasing abundance ; and 

 as to variety of sorts, as well in leaf as in flower, it surpasses even the 

 flower of the auricula. How delightful the country where geraniums 

 form the underwood and the myrtles tower above 1 Softly, my friends. 

 Beneath that underwood lurk the poisonous lizards and serpents, and 

 through those myrtle-boughs the deadly winged-adders rustle ; while 

 all around is dry and burning sand. The geranium is a native of the 

 south of Africa ; and though it will not receive its death-blow from 

 even a sharpish frost, it will not endure the winter even in the mild cli- 

 mate of England. But then it is so easy of cultivation, it grows so fast, 

 blows so soon, and is so little troublesome, that it seems to argue an 

 insensibility to the charms of nature not to have geraniums if we have 

 the means of obtaining earth and sun. The geranium is propagated 

 from seed or from cuttings. The seed, like that of the auricula, does 

 not produce flower or leaf like the mother plant, except by chance. It 

 is easily saved, and for curiosity's sake may be sown to see if a new va- 

 riety will come. But a cutting from any part of the plant, old wood or 

 young wood, stuck into the ground, or into a pot, will grow and become 

 a plant, and will blow in a month from the time you put it into the 

 ground. You must have plants, indeed, to cut from, but these may be, 

 in small number at any rate, in a window during winter. When the 

 spring comes cut them up into cuttings, put these in the ground where 

 you wish to have plants during the summer. They will be in bloom by 

 July, and before October will be large as a currant-tree. Take off' cut- 

 tings from these during September, put them in pots, and they are 

 ready for the next spring. If you have a- green-house you have gera- 

 niums in full bloom all the long dreary winter. 



