228 
CULTURE OF A FEW ORNAMENTAL PLANTS. 
Should any of our readers have been able to grow this plant in the greenhouse, 
we shall be glad to learn what method they have adopted for carrying it through 
the winter, and what proportion of their stock is annually lost during that period. 
By the system of putting the pots in flats of water, and giving them a moderate 
stove heat, we do not think a single one has failed in the places where we have 
seen it practised. 
In some of the London nurseries, and in a few private gardens, we have been 
particularly pleased this last summer with standard plants of Cytisus 7iigricans^ a 
species that produces its long spikes of small yellow blossoms through the months 
of June, July, and part of August, and contributes not a little to the gaiety of the 
border or parterre. The mode of obtaining it thus, is to graft it at the usual time on 
stocks of C'l/tisus Laburnum^ (the common Laburnum,) which may be three, four, 
or five feet in height, according to the purpose for which they are destined, and 
about one-third or half an inch thick. As the shoots of C. nigricans grow out 
very regularly, are not more than nine inches or a foot long, and constitute a 
beautiful round head, the species so treated is peculiarly well adapted for planting 
in the parterres of geometrical flower-gardens, on lawns, terraces, or other places 
where formal figures or straight lines prevail. From its great beauty, moreover, 
an additional incentive is afi'orded to its cultivation, and we here mention it with 
the view of making it more generally known as a highly ornamental shrub. When 
grafted in the manner we have suggested, it will require pruning yearly, in a 
similar way to standard Hoses ; for by cutting in the shoots, their number is greatly 
increased, and the head rendered much more dense. Especial care must also be 
taken to prevent the stock from developing branches. Being so much stronger than 
the species grafted upon it, the latter would soon be exhausted or smothered were 
the shoots of the former allowed to grow. 
As the fashion of turning out half-hardy exotics into the beds of the flower- 
garden has now become thoroughly established, and as every accession to the list 
of those already employed in this way must be interesting, from the enlarged 
facilities for making a fine, symmetrical, or varied display which it places within 
the gardener's power, it may be well to mention that the Malm Creeana is an 
exceedingly suitable plant for such an object. 
Its habit is that of an under-shrub or sufiruticose plant, the upper part of the 
stems being succulent and inclined to be what is called herbaceous, and the lower 
portions harder and more woody. Young plants of this species transplanted in 
spring into a moderately rich bed, if their more straggling shoots are pinched ofi^, 
or pegged down to the earth where necessary, will soon cover the surface, and inter- 
mingle with each other in a dense mass, flowering all the summer and autumn. So 
treated, their branches and leaves assume a luxuriance and health which they never 
acquire in a pot ; the flowers are larger and handsomer ; and the whole plant 
presents an aspect greatly superior to that which it exhibits in ordinary 
cultivation. 
