HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 87 



Flower Garden. — The importance of draining has been frequently 

 urged in this department of "the Florist;" but the state in which we still 

 frequently find the walks, lawns, and flower gardens of our friends, teaches 

 us that it cannot be too often pressed on their attention. Passing recently 

 over the grounds of an acquaintance in his company, we were compelled to 

 abandon the walks, and take to the turf; it had been rapidly thawing for a 

 day or so, and our feet went into the gravel up to the ankles. I remarked 

 that the walks had been badly constructed originally, but was corrected by 

 mv friend's observation that "the frost had not got out of the gravel at the 

 bottom to let the water at the surface through." This looks like a good rea- 

 son for bad walks, but it will not bear examination. Walks should be so 

 constructed, that little or no water can lay on, or get into the material to 

 freeze, so that when a thaw comes, there is nothing to make a walk wet. 

 This is to be effected by forming a walk of binding material, rounding it 

 slightly in the centre so as to throw the water completely off it, and in the 

 first place constructing a good underdrain in the centre of the walk, so as 

 to draw in the water as rapidly as any may percolate through the material. 

 These underdrains should have no connection with the surface, as they will 

 in that case be easily choked by the sand and gravel of summer thunder 

 storms. Hard frosts succeed so rapidly to rain storms in this country, that 

 the best constructed walks will occasionally be bad; but this ought not to 

 render them as we so generally find them, useless for a third of the year. 

 The theory of draining is still ill understood. Every one of experience in 

 the matter, knows that land underdrained, is drier in winter and moister in 

 summer than it otherwise would be ; but very few see clearly why it is so. 

 It depends on the principle that air is a better non-conductor than water; 

 and non-conductors do not get rapidly hot or rapidly cold, consequently are 

 not so liable to become extremely dry or wst. When we underdrain wet 

 land, a channel is opened through which the water in the soil is drawn, and 

 as air will always follow where water escapes, the worst non-conductor is 

 taken out of the soil and a better substituted. A well-drained soil is, in 

 other words, a soil well-supplied with air ; and is thus capable of letting a 

 superabundance of water escape through it, and of offering the best resist- 

 ance to excessive evaporation. The season has now arrived for putting eve- 

 rything in this department in order : walks cleaned, shrubs finished pruning, 

 lawn3 cleaned, and any improvements, or alterations proceeded with. "Pro- 

 crastination is the thief of time," and on no one does his peculations fall 

 more heavily than on the gardener. As soon as danger from frost is past, 

 the best time to plant box edgings has arrived. To amateurs who cannot 

 command the services of professional gardeners, the operation comes "un- 



