Lately puUished, price Is. 6d. 

 A NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION OF 



HANDY BOOK 



OF 



THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 



By the Same Author. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 



' ' On Flower-Gardens a manual of modem dimensions has been much want- 

 ed ; that is to say, a lonafide manual by a practical man, having sympathies 

 with his vocation, and of sufficient standing therein to claim the attention both 

 of amateurs and professionals. Such a want is supplied by Mr David Thom- 

 son, who seems to have had abundant experience in English floriculture, in 

 which he has been engaged, it would appear, both near London and in vari- 

 ous parts of England and Scotland, and who, moreover, is no stranger to the 

 trials or triumphs involved in making a ' desert smile, ' and in attempting in 

 an unkindly climate achievements in which inferior craftsmen would fail with 

 every resource of soil, climate, and appliances. . . . To sum up, this 

 ' Handy Book ' deserves a welcome from all classes interested in floriculture. 

 The laudatores iemporis acti, still wedded to the old formal border, still 

 ready to maintain that the new-fashioned rose, 



' With its fine foreign name, is scentless, pale, 

 Compared with the old cabbage/ 



will find their weakness respected — nay, indulged. The lovers, and there are 

 many, of Nature in her spring attire, will learn from it a hundred new ways 

 to adjust her mantle. And those who have no care or thought for anything 

 save an autumn display in the groups and masses of heliotrope, verbena, cal- 

 ceolaria, and geranium, cannot better secure the effectual carrying out of 

 their wishes than by presenting this ' Handy Book of the Flower-Gzurden ' to 

 their gardener's hbrary." — Saturday Review. 



" One of the very few books of its kind in which the amateur, instead of 

 being overwhelmed by details, has the principles which are to guide him put 

 plainly and clearly before him, so that he may be able to think and judge for 

 himself. . . . Those who have only small and moderate means and 

 apphances, even if they have merely a patch of ground, a few beds in front of 

 a parlour-window even, will find this book of use. It is quite impossible, in 

 the limited space at our disposal, to go into the details of culture referred to 

 by Mr Thomson ; nor is at all necessary that we should do so, for he speaks 

 with the advantage of great experience ; and no one who has seen the beauti- 

 ful and gorgeous display he makes at the gardens over which he reigns at 

 Archerfield, will hesitate to accept him as an authority. The directions for 

 the growth and management of hardy and half-hardy annuals, and of plants 

 generally, not omitting ferns, aquatics, and flowering shrubs suitable for beds 

 and shrubbery borders, have the merit of being perfectly plain ; every neces- 

 sary detail of cultivation is given, and all the selections which he has made are 

 so marked in the type that the person who has means for only a small collec- 

 tion can see at a glance which it is best for him to begin with." — Pall Mall 

 Gazette. 



William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh and London. 



