48 
OPERATIONS FOR MARCH. 
Herbaceous plants that have grown too large for the borders, must be sepa- 
rated at the time of digging. Probably every specimen will be included in this 
observation ; for, if all circumstances are favourable, they usually need parting 
annually ; and those which increase slowly will be advantaged by transposition 
to another spot. The practice of merely paring off the exuberant portions of 
common plants with the spade, and leaving the old original stock in the same 
situation year after year, is, though still adhered to by many gardeners, in oppo- 
sition to every principle of reason and philosophy. Flowers, like culinary plants, 
demand a succession of crops on any plot of ground ; or, in other words, the 
species must be yearly transferred to a new site, in order to preserve them from 
deterioration. 
While the above rule holds good with all real species, it is pre-eminently 
applicable to hybrids. Pinks, Carnations, Polyanthuses, and numbers of others of 
greater rarity, are deprived of their valuable properties if always kept in the limited 
space which was first allowed them. Nature, constantly assiduous in providing 
for her more immediate subjects, furnishes each acknowledged species with the 
power of producing lateral and more or less remote offsets, which, penetrating a 
new and untainted earth, derive from thence fresh food, and go on spreading 
outwards each year with the same success. How truly absurd, then, of the 
cultivator, whose avowed aim is to improve on Nature, to nullify her struggles for 
release from an infected medium, and positively retain his plants in a worse state 
than they would enjoy if quite neglected, by cutting off, each winter, the only 
healthy parts of a perennial herbaceous species ! 
We hope soon to see the custom herein condemned wholly discontinued. When 
every herbaceous plant is yearly lifted, and replanted in a different spot, preserving 
the outer portions alone of those that are becoming troublesomely large, while the 
aged stumps are thrown away as worthless, our pleasure-ground borders will 
assume another aspect, and be little less attractive than those beds of the flower- 
garden whose ornaments are renewed as often as their flowers wither. 
Preparing and planting cuttings of hardy shrubs, and adjusting layers, being 
very ordinary operations, have no claim on our present space further than the 
suggestion that the latter is to be effected while the digging is in progress. The 
sowing of annuals is of a like nature, and may be passed over with a mere allusion 
to the necessity of performing it in March. 
