40 TREATMENT OF HYDRANGEA HORTENSIS. 
to the length of three inches ; and those which are very luxuriant should graduate 
between the two. But with plants that are stored in houses, there is ever an 
inclination, towards autumn, to make a second growth, and it is at that time that 
the removal of their extra developments becomes of the highest moment. We 
would take away the whole of these, leaving only about an eighth or a quarter of 
an inch to avoid the necessity for cutting the old wood. Shoots formed in autumn 
are never properly matured, and if suffered to remain, soon bring the plant into an 
unhealthy and unornamental condition. 
Some culturists, in abstracting the tender shoots of their exotics, use nothing 
more than the hand, pinching them off between the nails of the thumb and fore- 
finger. We cannot commend that practice, since it inevitably crushes the shoot, 
more or less, and must leave it more liable to lose its juices or sap, and in a less 
likely state to heal rapidly. A sharp knife seems therefore preferable. 
The lengthened space we have already devoted to the subject precludes us from 
saying more than that the plan propounded is as suitable to specimens transplanted 
into conservatories, as to those cultivated in pots, and really appears calculated, by 
a judicious employment of it, to create quite a new style of ornamental plants, or, 
at any rate, to render those exquisite specimens which grace the numerous summer 
exhibitions more the rule than the exception in gardens of every grade. 
TREATMENT OF HYDRANGEA HORTENSIS AS A 
BORDER FLOWER. 
A LARGE and important class of the devotees of floriculture, — and among them, 
doubtless, are some who honour our pages with a perusal, — are those who do not 
consider themselves justified in keeping more than one greenhouse, or only a small 
pleasure and flower garden, and to whom, in consequence, numbers of the finest 
exotic plants are an unattainable treasure. For the benefit of such, we have always 
great pleasure in giving publicity to facts which tend to prove that handsome 
species, which have usually been thought tender, are quite hardy enough to flourish 
in the open border in many parts of England ; particularly as we know that 
the same facts will be fully as acceptable to the more wealthy cultivator, since all 
desire to grow them at the least possible expense, and are gratified when they can 
get them to succeed, unprotected, in our climate. 
The Hydrangea hortensis, from the sliowiness and delicate tints of its enormous 
masses of blossoms, has long been a favourite with all who could afford it a place 
in a forcing-house in spring, to harden it by degrees, till it perfected its flowers 
in the greenhouse or the open air. But very few have deemed it adapted for 
adorning the borders of the pleasure-grounds, and we do not now recollect more than 
