get cuttings) ; or from young nursery plants they would give 

 you a splendid ^art and you would have a good ^tock of 

 dwarfs and as many ^andards as you cared to train. Then 

 in the future you would always have your own plants to 

 provide you with cuttings. 



^ There are two or three points concerning lantanas that 

 it is desirable you should know. To keep the dwarf plants 

 broad and bushy the tips of the central ^em and the tips 

 of the lateral branches should be snipped away as the plant 

 develops or rather when it is about ten inches high. You may 

 train them into a little globe form, by a " round " pruning 

 or again you can keep them a foot high or twice that high. 

 It is all a matter of pruning. Bone-meal and wood ashes, 

 half and half, is the food lantanas prefer. Powder the surface 

 soil with it in Midsummer, and again in late Augu^. Be 

 sure that it is thoroughly worked into the soil, and after a 

 real watering of the beds notice how the plants respond to 

 this feeding. 



^ As they are half-hardy perennials lantanas may be planted 

 out in May and if the faded flowers are kept cut with a good 

 length of ^em, the end of Autumn will find them aflower 

 and as beautiful as in the very heart of Summer. The violas 

 are hardy and are ever-blooming in the true^ sense, and as 

 a ten inch border to the bed will provide a soft, gold and mauve 

 edging which will remain in flower quite as long as the lan- 

 tanas. I saw violas, not ju^t a scattered few but a great many, 

 blooming away the fir^t week in November. 

 ^ A wider common knowledge among amateur gardeners 

 of the finer flowers will soon relegate the crude " blotched 

 and spotted " things to either the vegetable garden or to 

 oblivion. Let us hope to oblivion! 



[78] 



