156 
TREATMENT OF A FEW ORNAMENTAL PLANTS. 
design of best exhibiting the flowers, and facilitating extensive propagation. A 
specimen is planted in the spring in an open bed or border, and the branches are 
immediately pegged down to the earth, and that part of them buried which is 
intermediately between the joints. By making them to cross each other in various 
directions, the parts bearing the buds, or those portions which are above the soil, 
may be kept regularly at about two inches apart throughout the whole of the piece 
covered ; and from these buds there will, in the ensuing season, rise a number of 
short branches, terminated by their splendid flowers. The whole will thus have 
the aspect of a charming dwarf shrub, and the foliage and blooms will be equally 
dense and abundant. 
When these lateral branches have ceased blooming, they may be fastened down 
in the same manner as those from which they sprang ; by which means, in every 
future season, after allowing for the abstraction of many young plants that will have 
been formed by the layering, there will be a constant addition of new shoots, and 
the bush will be continually extending itself, as well as growing more compactly. 
Where there is a choice of situations, the one selected for C. ccerulea should be 
a little sheltered from the north and east, and open to the opposite quarters. Much 
importance is not, however, attached to this point, and if the soil be a rich friable 
loam, not too much exposed to either aridity or saturation, the plant will flourish 
in the greatest luxuriance ; as, from the quantity of roots it must form, the severest 
cold will scarcely affect it. In plots for which a succession of flowers is not so 
much desired, specimens treated as above recommended would form a very beauti- 
ful bed, and would flower for at least two months in the year. 
The object of the mode here briefly described being to bring the leaves and 
inflorescence closer together, and to place the latter so below the eye that it can be 
looked down upon, (seeing that no part of the flower is so interesting as the upper 
surface,) there can be no doubt, since these are the great desiderata with C. Sieboldii , 
that the like treatment would enhance its beauty to the same extent. Still, as 
the latter species blooms far more liberally than C. ccerulea , it is better adapted 
than that plant for growing on trellises ; and, notwithstanding its hardiness, a few 
specimens should always be kept in pots for the greenhouse. Trained to a wall, or 
any analogous erection, or to the rafters of a house, its flowers, always having the 
centre turned upwards, are uninteresting when they are situated where, in order 
to see them, it is necessary to look up ; and from the disposition of the plants to 
bloom chiefly towards the extremities of their shoots, this disadvantage is hardly 
to be avoided. 
But the proper way of managing C. Sieboldii is to fasten it to a trellis, which, 
if affixed to a pot for standing on a stage, ought not to be more than three feet 
high, and, when placed in the open ground, or in a conservatory border, or any- 
where on a level with the path on which the observer walks, about twice that 
altitude. Whether the trellis be barrel-shaped or angular is of little consequence, 
provided the shoots are arranged closely around it. If duly exposed to light, the 
