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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



flaked Carnations and edged Picotees are so robust and so full 

 of constitutional vigour that they make excellent border plants, as 

 can be seen by the beds in these Chiswick gardens planted with 

 Carnations received from all parts of the country. I do not think 

 I ever knew a grower of Carnations in pots who did not also have 

 his beds and borders of Carnations in the open. If he be a raiser 

 of improved varieties from seed, he plants them out in the open 

 and proves them there, and if anything of promise reward his 

 efforts he will lift the plant and place it in a pot for security, as 

 also for the convenience of layering the grass, and so obtaining 

 increase. Do we not all adopt the practice of specially caring for 

 those possessions to which we attach the greatest value ? — though 

 I have known a florist to think much more highly of a seedling 

 flower than of his own reputation. I confess that when I visit Mr. 

 Dodwell's Carnation garden at Oxford during the blooming time 

 I always take more interest in the beds of seedlings in the open 

 than in the named varieties he cultivates in pots. They over- 

 ilow into beds and borders at all points ; it is a kind of Carna- 

 tion inundation that for a time almost hides from view every other 

 floral aspect. And there is scarcely an exhibitor of Carnations 

 of whose garden this could not be said. The real fact is, it is the 

 florist who raises superior varieties of the Carnation that does 

 so much to enrich our borders with new and valuable flowers. 

 He is limited by the rules governing exhibitions in his selection 

 of types to grow. Outside of these are hundreds full of grace and 

 tenderness — winsome and delightful floral morsels — that become 

 the occupants of the borders, gilding and enlivening them with 

 touches of beauty, of which the Carnation is so prodigal. There 

 is nothing too good to go into the open border; the most valuable 

 Carnation ever raised w T ould not be out of place there. There 

 is excellent common sense in the remark made by old Luke 

 Ashmole, of Tulip renown, some years ago : " Thou knowestthat 

 a good thing takes up no more room in the garden than a bad one, 

 and what's the use of growing a bad one ? " Let some organs of 

 the gardening press rage ever so furiously, and ambitious and not 

 always well-informed writers imagine a vain thing, to-day, in our 

 Carnation Parliament, we gratefully acknowledge the valuable 

 help of the florist in enriching our borders with lovely Carnations. 



I would have every grower of border Carnations be also a 

 raiser of seedlings. It is a hackneyed saying, but I do not think 



