115 
NOTES ON THE VERBENA. 
This beautiful little flower is valuable in a 
flower garden, and almost indispensable as a 
subject for bedding out, but so much of its 
usefulness depends on its habit, that some of 
the most showy flowers in a stand are worth- 
less in the garden. The old Verbena Melin- 
dres is a spreading, creeping plant, close to 
the ground, rooting ateveryjoint, and blooming 
its whole length, showing the whole summer 
a surface of brilliant scarlet. The flowers are 
not well formed, but until a better formed 
variety be found, equally dwarf, equally spread- 
ing, and blooming as brightly and abundantly, 
Melindres cannot fail to keep its place. 
Among many new and splendid varieties in 
other respects, there are many prevailing 
faults ; some grow very robustly, make very 
long shoots, straggle a long way, and flower 
only at the ends ; others grow very strong 
and tall, but require support, or else lie about 
without order or form ; some bloom so slowly, 
that a truss is never all in flower, but the outer 
blooms decay before the inner ones open — these 
always look mean ; others again have tall 
instead of broad trusses, and the individual 
flowers form no kind of surface, but appear so 
many steps, one among another. Now, we are 
careless about the shape of the truss, so that the 
blooms touch one another, and form a surface 
of colour. This may be flat, like V. Melindres 
or half a ball, or a cone, or even higher ,• the 
grand object is, to have the face of the flowers 
outwards, and touching each other ; the pre- 
ference however must be given to the spherical 
trusses ; and all those that do not at some time 
or other show all their individual blooms open 
on a truss, are not worth keeping. The value 
of the verbena, as a bedding subject, for Dutch 
or geometrical gardening, is great, whatever 
form the bed may be ; whatever figure we 
have to fill out, the verbena is ready with 
almost any colour, requiring only to be planted 
at moderate distances, for it will soon cover 
the ground. In planting out the verbena in 
any particular figure, let one plant be tolerably 
near all the principal points, because it the 
sooner fills those features which distinguish 
the bed ; for instance, say the shape is a 
diamond, let a plant be at each point within a 
few inches, that it may fill it out at once, 
because it then only requires to be clipped 
into shape, and its growth turned inwards, 
and the cutting encourages fresh growth, and 
abundant bloom. The bed will not be long 
filling and coming to its colour ; however 
oddly the shapes may be made, the same plan 
should be adopted. If you have plenty of 
plants, they may be planted nine inches or a 
foot apart, but the outside ones not more than 
three or four inches from the edge. If they am 
neglected after planting, they will soon straggle 
over the edges on the walks, and destroy the 
form of your design ; but you must cut the 
shoots to occupy only the bed, lay the shoots 
in the direction you wish them to take, and if 
they do not lie without fastening, peg them 
down with little pegs, the form of a small 
hooked walking stick, which can be cut by 
thousands from birch twigs ; or it can be done 
in wet weather by little bits of bass matting 
six inches long, dibbled into the ground, as if 
the two ends were being planted, for when the 
hole is made, the two ends of the bass, 
which is looped over the shoot to be held 
down, are put down into the hole, and the earth 
pressed in upon them with the dibble ; this 
will apply to all creeping plants, and can al- 
ways be done when pegs are scarce or not at 
hand. But it is generally enough to lay the 
shoots the way they are to grow ; when the 
plants make growth, the ends can be clipped 
as true to the figure as the box edging itself 
is, which should by no means be covered at any 
one part by the plants in their ramblings. 
For such gardens as are formed into figures, 
and which derive all their beauty from their 
uniformity of design, it is absolutely necessary 
to attend to uniformity of colour ; geometrical 
gardens have necessarily various shaped beds, 
and it is a good plan to have all the beds that 
are of a form, the same colour, or half of one 
colour, and half of another. Thus, if there 
are six of a form x'ound the whole design, 
three may be of one colour, and three of ano- 
ther, but six very prominent beds should be 
scarlet, because it is the most striking ; white 
is another very striking colour, if we may call 
white a colour ; then there are pinks, purples, 
lilacs, crimsons, and all manner of shades but 
yellow, and this is the only exception to make 
in planting the whole. Verbenas will not sup- 
ply yellows, and it must be done with some- 
thing else ; they will not give a blue, but they 
very nearly approach it, and therefore blue 
could be done without. The yellows may be 
supplied variously at different times. Yellow 
Allyson is a dwarf perennial that will bloom 
with the earliest and last some weeks in 
bloom, and it must then be replaced with other 
subjects, got forward in pots, or otherwise ; 
but there is a so-called yellow verbena, sul- 
phurca, we believe ; from this we may one 
day have improvements in colour, (for it has 
not much more of the yellow in it than a 
yellow hyacinth,) nevertheless, we hold it to 
be the easiest and most permanent mode of 
planting a Dutch garden, to use verbenas only. 
The height, colour, form, and other matters, 
i 2 
