THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
133 
PREPARINa AND PLANTING FLOWER-BEDS. 
BY THOMAS TKUSSLEB. 
S all who have the good fortune to possess a flower garden 
are actively engaged in jjreparing the beds in readiness 
for the plants with which they will be filled during the 
summer, a few remarks upon the manner in which the 
beds should be prepared and planted will, perhaps, be 
of considerable service to many readers of the Floral World. 
Beds that are unoccupied iu the winter should be prepared during 
that season ; but as spring flowering plants are now so extensively 
grown, there are but few gardens iu which this work can be done 
much before the early part of May. The first steps will, of course, 
be to clear the beds of the spring flowers, and to deal with them 
according to their requirements — such things as daisies, polyan- 
thuses, and violas being planted iu nursery beds ; and the forget- 
me-nots and silene, which can be raised from seed sown in the 
summer, either cleared oft’ and removed to the rubbish heap, or chop- 
ped up and turned in when the beds are dug. As the spring flowers 
are rather late this season, it will not be desirable to wait, iu every 
instance, until they are quite past their best, because of the risk of 
the summer bedders being injured by the delay. When the beds 
are empty, give them a liberal supply of manure. Of course every 
one must use some degree of judgment as to the dressing, for much 
depends on the plants with which the beds are to be filled. For 
beds to be filled with verbenas and calceolarias, the soil cannot well 
be too rich. A lighter dressing will be quite sufficient for all the 
scarlet geraniums, for if the soil is too rich there will be an excess 
of leafage over the flowers. The same may be said of all the 
variegated varieties ; if the soil is too good they lose the delicate 
colours for which they are so much admired, and therefore fail to 
answer the desired end. But, as a general rule, a bed intended for 
any kind of summer flowering plants should have a dressing of some 
sort to enrich it. The beds having been manured, take out a deep 
trench at one end of the bed, say two feet wide, and the same depth, 
if the bottom soil is good ; if not, take off the good mould from the 
top, and well stir the bottom soil, mixing with it Some manure or 
rubbish of any sort. Follow on through the bed in the same way, 
and when the end of the bed is reached, the soil taken from the first 
trench will fill up the last one. After this let the beds be well 
forked over once or twice, so that all the soil may be well mixed 
with the manure, and also that it may be thoroughly exposed to the 
air for a few days previous to the bed being planted. 
By adopting this plan there is a great advantage gained, by the 
bed not requiring any watering in the busy summer season, when 
every hour is of great importance to those who have their hands 
quite full of other work without using the water-pot. I have in- 
variably found that plants growing in beds prepared as recommended 
in this paper do not want watering after they are well established 
in the beds. 
