85 
TENDER PLANTS THAT WILL THRIVE IN A SHELTERED 
BORDER. 
That there are multitudes of plants to which old-fashioned cultivators continue 
to assign a position in the stove or greenhouse, but which have been demonstrated 
by the more enterprising and experimental to require only a proper situation and 
partial shelter to induce them to succeed in the open air, has frequently been as- 
serted in this magazine ; and in the commencing number of the present volume, an 
article was devoted to a description of the kind of border and protection which such 
objects require. Referring to that paper for all necessary information as to the 
principles of procedure, we shall now name a few of the species which we have seen 
flourish in those circumstances ; adverting, where needful, to the peculiar attention 
they demand, and confining ourselves solely to the most ornamental kinds. 
Allowing the first place to a plant whose extraordinary merit, rather than the 
novelty of any communication we have to make concerning it, entitles it to the 
earliest notice, we have to introduce Erythrina crista-galli. Several years ago, and 
in various publications, it has been stated vaguely that this splendid exotic might be 
grown in a protected border; but as far as we have observed, the hint has rarely 
been acted upon. Indeed it is common to meet with it in stoves, where we would 
still have a plant or two kept for its showy flowers, though very seldom does it 
adorn the bed of the conservatory ; and those who have no protective structure in 
which to grow it, or only a small greenhouse, scarcely seem aware that there is such 
a plant in existence, much less that it can be cultivated in their own border, and 
will there attain a far higher perfection than if it were beneath glass. 
The specimens of this plant that have at different times presented themselves to 
our view in the borders before plant-houses, have always impressed us with the 
desirability of extending its out-door cultivation ; yet, with none have we been so 
much struck as with a noble one that has been planted for years in the border 
fronting the greenhouses at Lady Tankerville’s villa, Walton-on-Thames ; and which, 
last year, bore stems, leaves, and flowers fully three times as large as those of plants 
nursed in a stove, the appearance of the whole being very imposing, and the colours 
of both blossoms and foliage peculiarly rich. 
For the plant in question, no other covering is furnished in winter than a thin 
layer of light litter, and a little exhausted bark would answer the same end equally 
well. Of the ease, therefore, with which it may be managed, nothing further need 
be said. Each year’s stems decay, or exhibit a tendency to decay naturally in the 
autumn, after the flowers are shed, when they can be cut down to within two or 
three inches of the base, and new ones will be produced in the ensuing spring. We 
urgently press this superb species on the attention of amateurs and the proprietors 
of small villas, as in it they may, without any expense for artificial heat, grow one of 
