SEPTEMBER i6i 



especially well grown as a single plant in good soil. To 

 add to its perfections it has a delicate, sweet smell, and 

 does well in water. Gardeners will always look upon it, 

 with a show of reason, as a horrid weed ; but flower- 

 lovers will never be without it. The little yellow 

 Fumitory is invaluable for waUs and dry places and 

 under shrubs, always looking fresh and green and 

 flourishing, however dry the weather or apparently un- 

 favourable the situation. It is a weed, but it keeps away 

 other weeds, which, as the old nurse said, was the great 

 use of mothers — they kept away stepmothers. Another 

 low-growing, fast-spreading small plant I strongly recom- 

 mend is the Polygonum affine. It has pink flowers, which 

 continue in bloom many weeks ; it can be increased with 

 the greatest facility by division, and it is a good border 

 plant, as the leaves take beautiful colours in the autumn. 

 The hardy Plumbago larpentcB is a first-rate plant for a 

 sunny, dry place, and its bright-blue flowers continue till 

 the frost comes. Tradescantia virginica is a plant con- 

 stantly turned out of borders, as it spreads so fast ; but all 

 it requires is severe thinning in the spring, and again 

 sometimes in the summer. I have four shades — the 

 ordinary blue, a deep red-purple shade, a pale grey, and 

 a pure white ; they are lovely flowers, and interesting 

 through their unusual shape. All these last-mentioned 

 plants are well worth growing in even the smallest gardens. 

 September 15tli. — I have flowered out of doors this 

 year for the first time the beautiful Amaryllis belladonna. 

 Anyone who has a garden, or a wall or a corner near a 

 greenhouse, where the conditions for growing this Lily 

 can be carried out, ought to spare no effort to make it 

 successful. The instructions have been clearly given 

 in the ' English Flower Garden,' but I have found two 

 other things helped the growth — one is planting them 

 by the wall of the greenhouse where the warm pipes run ; 



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