A HINT OR TWO ABOUT ANNUALS. 
141 
They should be potted firmly, and have a neat flower-stick inserted for supporting 
them for a year or two; and after being well watered, should be plunged to the pot-rims 
in coal ashes, in a pit or frame facing the north, until the middle of September, all the 
caulescent and radical shoots being previously removed, the leading shoot and leaves at 
the summit only being retained from the time of potting. They will be fit for forcing the 
same season; but if the object is rather to produce fine plants than an immediate 
display of flowers, forcing or flowering at all must be deferred until the second year, and 
the plants allowed to continue at rest in the cold pit until spring returns, when they should 
be introduced into a warm, airy greenhouse, and induced by frequent waterings of weak 
liquid manure, formed of cow-dung, to grow rapidly, continuing the removal of superfluous 
leaves, side shoots, and flowers throughout the summer, when they will have become fine 
plants with a stout stem, a foot or eighteen inches high, with a large tuft or crown of 
leaves at the summit. At this time they must be hardened off in a dry, airy, cold pit, 
to be in readiness for forcing in a light, warm, airy greenhouse or pit, without bottom 
heat, in preference to the stove or regular flower-forcing pit, the temperature of the latter 
being found too high for inducing a florescent habit in what may now appropriately receive 
the appellation of Viola arborea. 
A HINT OR TWO ABOUT ANNUALS. 
By Mr. Kemp, The Park , Birkenhead. 
Since the beautiful Verbenas, Petunias, &c., with which flower-gardens and borders are 
now so largely decorated, have come into general use, the scarcely less beautiful tribe of 
annuals have gone very much out of fashion, and are chiefly employed in those gardens 
where the more tender things above mentioned are hardly accessible. Such a curtailment, 
however, of the ornamental resources of a place, so clearly occasions a diminution of its 
attractiveness, that a few words in favour of the older and partially discarded summer 
flowers may be deemed, perhaps, less an act of charity than justice. 
The greatest drawback, as we conceive, to the employment of these comparatively 
fugitive productions, is their want, in general, of any marked character. Being mostly 
small, loose growing, and easily dashed about by winds and rain, and being commonly sown 
in small patches, they seldom produce a striking effect, and their naturally short duration is 
virtually abbreviated by the action of winds and storms. This is in consequence of their 
being unable to support themselves, and not being thought worth the trouble of staking. 
All this arises, however, from the meagreness of the patches in which they are sown, 
and the extent to which these again are usually thinned out. 
Annuals, in order to the development of anything like their true beauty, should always 
be sown in broader masses, and the plants left tolerably thick. Two, three, or four square 
feet at least, should be appropriated to each group. For by this means alone can their 
perfect growth and production of flowers be secured, and they will thus also be enabled to 
support each other against the action of wind and wet. Having been accustomed to grow 
them thus in beds and masses for several years, we may safely affirm that those who have only 
grown them in the usual stinted patches, can have no idea of their real beauty. They are 
almost universally unfitted for forming single specimens, not being sufficiently strong, sturdy, 
or free flowering ; and it is only when they are cultivated in large groups that they show r 
themselves in their true character. 
But besides this radical defect in the ordinary mode of treatment, they are often raised 
in reserve gardens or beds, and transplanted into the pleasure-grounds. Except for flower- 
gardens, where a constant display of bloom is required, the transplantation of annuals, 
however carefully performed, and even in the most favourable weather, is a very undesirable 
practice. It invariably weakens and impoverishes the plants, and prevents them from 
growing luxuriantly and flowering finely ; taking from them, in short, that richness and 
luxuriance which is their chief merit, and resolving their culture into that of individual 
