160 
HINTS ON FLOWER GARDENING. 
from the time they are planted out until they are destroyed by the frost in the 
autumn. 
Too much attention cannot be paid to the habit of the plants used for grouping 
purposes, as, if the plants are naturally of compact growth, they will not require so 
much training and pegging down to keep them in form, neither will they look so 
weedy or neglected where proper attention is not paid to them. 
Among many of the new flowers, which, as flowers, in the eye of a florist are very 
beautiful, there is a great want of compactness in the habit of growth, so much so as 
to render many of the finest flowers almost useless for flower-garden purposes. 
Take for example some of the Verbenas, and a single plant will cover several square 
yards of ground almost without producing flowers sufficient to form a bouquet for 
the button-hole. These by gardeners are, and very properly, called weedy plants, 
and such ought always to be excluded from a well-appointed flower-garden. For 
Verbenas of fine habit I should name such as Hendersonia, Atrosanguinea, Resplen- 
dens, Beauty, Princess Royal, Favorite, and others of similar habit ; but those which 
have been bred from Neillii, Incisa, and Speciosa, are all loose growers. Again, of 
Petunias, we have some beds of Smithei superb, the finest purple in cultivation, and 
also Meteor, Princess Royal, and Famossissima, which at the present time are not 
more than nine inches high in the tallest part of the bed, and are yet so densely 
covered with bloom, that you could not in any part from the centre to the sides find 
three square inches in one place which is not covered with flower. These beds were 
planted about the middle of May, the plants being placed about fifteen inches apart, 
they have been pegged down three times since they were planted, and are now what 
we have described them. One thing is worth remarking, and which in a great 
measure accounts for their being so dense and dwarf, and that is, the young shoots 
are regularly stopped once a week by pricking out the points of the blooming shoots, 
so that we have constantly a succession of young wood coming up from the bottom, 
and also a regular succession of bloom. One great advantage of training Petunias 
so closely as this is, that neither wind nor rain has any power upon them, whereas 
beds in which the plants are allowed to get from eighteen inches to a yard high, 
always look shabby for a long time after a heavy storm. 
Now, our object in calling attention to these things at the present time, is to 
suggest the propriety of commencing a reformation of our flower-garden manage- 
ment at the proper season ; and as, by the time these remarks meet the public eye, 
it will be the season to commence the propagation of plants for the coming season 
of 1848, we would insist upon the following general principles being attended to. 
First, with reference to the form of the garden itself ; if it is proposed to make any 
alterations in its form, let the plans and arrangements be made at once, and after 
you have convinced yourself of the propriety of the design, lay it down in a tempo- 
rary manner on a bed of sand, and then fill each bed with flowers of the same colour 
which you think of planting the beds with next season; recollecting, that if the beds 
are large, each may be edged with its complementary colour — as, scarlet with white, 
