A STROLL THROUGH THE GARDEN. 
17 
flower garden and conservatory, for you will 
perhaps be better pleased, though not more 
usefully instructed, among the flowers than 
among the vegetables. In the mean time, the 
only thing worth making a note of, is the faet 
that plants may be hastened by sowing them 
in a small space, where you may protect them 
easily, and where they will grow until the 
weather is open enough for them to be planted 
out. I have known potatoes to be treated in 
this way, but it is only of use when time has 
been lost and the ground is not ready so soon as 
it ought to be. In that case, I have known 
the potatoes to be set in a comparatively small 
space, and there be retained until the ground 
was ready ; but this is not a desirable plan, 
they are easily damaged in planting out. 
THE FLOWER GARDEN. 
This morning, you seaphas brought with it 
a tolerably hard frost : this shows the ne- 
cessity of seizing every moment that is 
favourable. Nobody could expect that so 
warm an evening would be succeeded by a 
sharp frost in the night. Had the gardener 
neglected to cover up any of his tender crops, 
on the supposition that there would be no 
frost, he would have had the mortification to 
see his hopes blighted, and he might have 
done so, without wishing to save himself 
trouble. The temptation is, that if the night 
could be insured, the plants do so much better 
uncovered than covered ; but it is never safe; 
there is no certainty. The flower garden, you 
observe, is in neater order than the kitchen 
garden : all the beds are uniform. Here we 
have one main path, six feet wide, and a four- 
feet border of each side, right down the 
centre, side paths just twelve feet from each 
wall, and the whole intermediate space is 
divided into beds of four feet wide, with paths 
of two feet between them. The white frost 
hangs on all the plants that are uncovered, so 
that you can see very little difference in the 
appearance of the beds, except that one lot of 
plants is larger in stature than another ; 
many of the beds are vacant to all appearance. 
Those which have irises, hyacinths, crocuses, 
narcissuses, ranunculuses, anemones, and 
many other of the bulbous and tuberous rooted 
plants, have nothing to indicate that they are 
occupied, except that the gardener's label with a 
number to it, and his book in which all the 
particulars are registered, tell him what each 
bed contains. Those beds which are covered 
with peas haulm, contain pinks and pansies ; 
of course they are all valuable ones, or they 
would not be covered, because the common 
sort are not tender. They will all bear a 
good deal of frost, but although severe frosts 
may not kill, they frequently check plants a 
good deal ; and you remember I tuld you what 
50. 
is the effect of frost upon the earth, and how the 
thawing expands the frozen water in the soil, 
and makes it spongy. The effect on a smooth 
surface is still more easily seen : it opens all 
the pores upwards, and creates innumerable 
little hillocks and fissures, doing considerable 
violence to any very fine fibres of plants that 
do not extend their roots downwards ; very 
small subjects, such as young pinks, and the 
still more brittle subjects, young pansies, are 
frequently turned fairly out of the ground, 
and lie on the surface with the roots exposed, 
much of the fine thready portion of the roots 
being broken off and remaining in the soil. 
We si) all notice this after the present frost goes, 
in some of the beds of small common things. 
The litter which you see thrown over them, 
is not so much to keep the plants from freez- 
ing as to prevent the frost from getting into 
the soil. While I lift the haulm up at this 
place, press your finger on the earth, and tell 
me whether it is hard or soft ; well, so long 
as they can keep it soft, the plants can take 
no harm, and if the cold lasts for weeks, the 
part that is covered will not be so hard 
frozen as the ground that is open. You see 
you may press the soil that has not been 
covered as hard as you please, but you can 
make no impression. Here is a row of com- 
mon garden frames, merely placed on a paved 
or hard ground, and all full of potted plants. 
Here are auriculas, just like so many very 
small cabbages; all of them have small hearts, 
these contain the truss of bloom that will rise 
in March and be fully developed in April. 
In the adjoining frame we have pansies, in 
small pots ; these, you observe, are plunged in 
sand up to the rims of the pots ; if they were 
not, a very slight frost that reached the side 
of the pots would go through them, and as 
the most tender fibres of the plant are close 
to the side, they would be frozen and damaged, 
by this the quantity of nourishment would be 
diminished very materially, and the plant 
receive a check ; but, plunged as they are to 
the rims, no ordinary frost can reach them, 
and an extra covering over the frames would 
very much neutralize the effects of a severe 
one. The pinks and pansies that are thus 
saved in pots are to turn out in beds early in 
the spring, without disturbing their fibres; or 
to put into large pots, to grow and bloom in 
them, so that they may be out of the way of 
frost, and therefore earlier than those out of 
doors. Here is a frame full of verbenas, 
kept through the winter in the smallest pots, 
that they may take less room. Petunias, 
hydrangeas, geranium cuttings, calceolarias, 
cinerarias, and various other plants for bed- 
ding out, occupy the succeeding frames, until we 
come to the carnations and picotec s, which, as 
you see, are set out two in each pot. These 
c 
