180 
CULTURE OF A FEW ORNAMENTAL PLANTS. 
calculated to enhance the beauty of each subject, and to display it advantageously. 
On these accounts, the culturist who only grows a few of the best kinds of plants, 
may rely on our notices as indicating some of those best adapted to his purpose. 
Brachycome iberidifolia is a new and very pretty annual, lately introduced from 
the Swan River Colony, and likely to be much in request during the ensuing 
season, as it has already been in the present. Although we have seen the flowers 
nearly white, and varying in shade from that to lilac and deep bluish purple, the 
commoner tint is very dark blue. Ear too much artificial heat has hitherto been 
applied to it in most places during germination and the earlier periods of its growth, 
and the consequence has been that scarcely anywhere has it manifested a fitness for 
adorning the open borders, plants that have been so turned out exhibiting a sickly, 
miserable appearance, and producing very inferior flowers. If treated as a border 
annual, it ought to be raised at the ordinary time, viz. about the month of April, 
and be planted out in May while quite small, and rendered as hardy as possible 
previously. Plants removed from the greenhouse to the beds of the flower-garden 
when nearly full-grown, cannot be expected to succeed, as no tender annual will 
bear such a sudden change of circumstance, and the check of transplantation, at that 
period of its progress. The graceful character of this species, however, and the 
number of stems it produces, recommend it as a very appropriate ornament to the 
greenhouse in the summer months ; and if kept in this situation, it will always be 
most interesting ; for, owing to its slenderness, and to the changeable hue of its 
blossoms, exposure to rain, wind, or sun, invariably injures it to a greater or less 
extent. When thus retained in pots, it should be kept continually on an elevated 
stage of a house through which air can freely circulate, and not allowed to grow in 
a weakly or straggling manner. By frequent shifting, in a common compost, it may 
be brought into pots of a moderate size, and, when six inches or a foot in height, will 
be as much or more in diameter, and bloom beautifully through the middle months 
of the year, while other kinds of flowers are usually rather scarce in the greenhouse. 
From this comparatively new annual, we advert to others which have become 
as familiar as the oldest ornaments of our gardens, but which have not yet been 
applied to an end for which they are eminently suitable. Those who adopt the 
grouping system of management in flower-gardens, and fill each of their beds with 
one sort of flower, need not be reminded of the difficulty of procuring plants to 
bloom in the early spring months, or rather in that period which intervenes between 
the development of the earliest flowers and the blooming of spring- sown annuals, or 
exotic herbaceous plants. There are a quantity of annuals, however, which, though 
commonly considered tender, and incapable of enduring the cold of our winters, 
succeed admirably when sown at a proper time, and come into flower in April, 
May, and June. When we mention that the lovely Nemophila insignis and others 
of similar habits stood through the last severe winter in an exposed border with 
complete impunity, it will at once be perceived that there need be no further 
hesitation about subjecting any Californian or North American annual to the like 
exposure. 
