NEW METHOD OF POTTING PLANTS. 
37 
be a most desirable object to give them the same means of attaining an early and 
luxuriant maturity in pots ; seeing that, in many places, there is no convenience 
for having appropriate borders or beds in plant-houses, and, where there is, the 
specimens cannot be so easily controlled, nor are they at all portable. 
Numerous experiments, both casually and designedly made, had shown that, 
by the common way of potting, no such ends could be brought about ; since plants 
which were placed in pots very considerably larger than those which they seemed 
to require, almost invariably suffered, to a greater or less degree, from the stag- 
nation of water in the soil. And as this accumulation evidently formed the chief 
obstacle to the adoption of large pots for the smallest plants, it was very justly 
thought that anything which could be employed to drain effectually the entire mass 
of earth, so that no water could stagnate therein, would give the means of allowing 
young plants in pots all the benefits which they would derive from being planted 
in beds. 
Following out this notion in a practical manner, small specimens were shifted 
from what are called sixty-sized pots, to those which were nine inches or a foot in 
diameter, using a turfy fibrous soil, divested of none of its rougher matters, and 
mixing with it a quantity of broken sand-stone, in pieces from a quarter to half 
an inch square. By the united aid of the turfy and vegetable matters in the soil, 
and the fragments of stone scattered throughout its substance, it was thus kept 
porous and open, without even a tendency to become hardened, consolidated, satu- 
rated, or sour ; and the plants throve in it with the rapidity and health of those 
which were placed in a border, while, being situated nearer the glass, and more 
subjected to the agency of air, &c., they began to flower much sooner, and more 
abundantly. 
Since these first investigations were made, the system has been pursued very 
extensively in the gardens of Mrs. Lawrence, of Ealing Park, where Mr. Goode, 
the very skilful gardener, has, by its means, produced results of a most astonishing 
nature. Applied to Heaths and New Holland plants particularly, it has effected 
wonders. Some species of the former, — which are at all times difficult to cultivate, 
often fail altogether, and grow with peculiar tardiness, — were transferred, last 
spring, from the cutting-pots in which they had been struck, immediately to large 
pots, nine, ten, or more inches across. The issue has been that, in the autumn, 
the specimens were a foot and upwards in height, and singularly bushy ; 
for a few that develop lateral shoots with the greatest slowness and scarcity, were 
largely and liberally furnished with them. Other and freer-growing kinds, had 
formed, in the same period, and by the like treatment, specimens nearly eighteen 
inches high, of the most compact and perfect figure, and had twice shown a dispo- 
sition to flower, which was repressed only that they might bloom better in the 
present year. 
In the case of some New Holland plants, the effects were even more astound- 
ing. Beautiful specimens, from one to two feet high, and as dense and spreading as 
