12 PRESENT-DAY GARDENING 
THE STAGING 
The staging must be arranged according to the width of 
the house. Narrow houses may be provided with a stage 
on each side and a path through the centre. Other struc- 
tures of sufficient width should be furnished with a side 
stage measuring 4 feet to 4 feet 6 inches in width, and a 
central stage on a somewhat higher level, and rising in steps 
to the middle and highest point. 
Iron frame-work is the best, because it is clean and 
almost indestructible. The uprights resting on the floor 
should be fixed in metal saucers, which, if kept filled with 
water, offer great obstacles to insects ascending from the 
floor. The open wood-work resting on the iron frames, 
and on which the plants are to stand, should be of teak 
or pitch-pine, and arranged trellis-like. For some years 
past it has been the practice to have a close, moisture- 
holding stage of slate, or tiles, beneath the upper and open 
wood-work stage. It was an invention of my own when 
adapting an ordinary plant-house with a slate stage to 
receive one of the earliest importations of Odontoglossum 
crispum. The existing slate stage was made water-tight 
at the joints, and a fillet of cement was run along the 
back; the surface was then covered with clean shingle, 
and home-made trellises, raised on bricks in three levels, 
were placed along the close staging to receive the plants. 
It proved a great success, and in the same house the small, 
bottom ventilators, the first of their kind, but which have 
now become general, were an equally good innovation. At 
that time, and for many years afterwards, the flooring of 
