238 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



front places in your borders, and you may grow them thus 

 gradually on for, I fully believe, twenty or thirty years before 

 they will have outgrown your powers of management. 



Next, What plants to get or raise. It would almost be 

 easier to say what not to get, but I will give you a list of what I 

 have found most suitable. But first let me say, do not begin 

 with too big plants ; be content to wait for them to grow big. I 

 have plants now in pots — Laurels 5 feet high and 5 feet through, 

 Aucubas 4 feet by 5 feet, Lawsonianas 6 and 7 feet high, and so 

 on ; but they have all been gradually grown on. If you begin with 

 too big plants, they almost invariably lose their lower branches 

 and get leggy — I don't know why they do so, but they do — 

 whereas if you begin with little fellows, a foot or 18 inches 

 high, you can keep them for, I am confident, twenty, thirty, or, 

 I shouldn't wonder, for even fifty years in pots, and feathered 

 down to the very ground. It wants just a little management and 

 care, but I am sure it can be done. 



Well, the most useful plant I know of for the purpose is. 

 Lawson's Cypress. It is a charming plant, so various that 

 almost every seedling raised is unlike its brethren. Go into any 

 good nursery in mid-August and ask for the Lawsoniana quarter, 

 and you will see rows upon rows of dainty little fellows, 8 inches 

 or a foot high or so, some close-growing, some spreading, some 

 tapering, some few with a golden gleam upon the green, some a 

 dull dead-coloured green, some with a shining brownish almost 

 metallic lustre, and some — the loveliest of all — with a pale bluey 

 • white glaucous hue upon the foliage, and with bright red stems. 

 Oh, how I revel in such quarters of plant children ! The only 

 drawback is, I always want to carry off far more than my nursery 

 — garden, I mean — could possibly contain. Well, you may have 

 your pick of all these little ones at about 5s. or so a dozen, accord- 

 ing to their size and age. Do not pick out all the prettiest. No„ 

 you want some of the duller ones as contrasts to the bright ; 

 some of the plain green to set off the glaucous and the golden 

 ones. Indeed, in all your choosing bear in mind that variety 

 of foliage, form, and habit is what you really want, and not all of 

 the most rare, or even all of the most beautiful. A boy who had 

 nothing but plum-pudding for dinner all the Christmas holidays 

 would loathe plum-pudding soon. It is the contrast with the 

 ordinary staple of the dinner which makes plum -pudding so» 



