283 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ September 29, 1881. 
give a good dressing of soot and wood ashes, and with a wooden 
rake well work it in. After its being trodden and the drills drawn 
give another dressing, then sow the seed. I find wood ashes an 
excellent preventive against grubs of all kinds, as well as being 
a valuable manure.—H. L. 
PEACH TRAINING. 
Some friends have been good enough to forward me copies of a 
paper containing further criticisms on my writings, and one of 
them in a note advises me “not to take too much notice of a 
critic, who is apparently more indebted than any writer of the 
day to the works of others and adds significantly that “if the 
said critic was confined to his own practice probably he would 
write much less voluminously, and I hope more usefully. It 
is pretty well understood amongst gardeners that those who are 
driven for subjects to the works of others have very little of their 
own worth writing about.” 
I,would not trouble you again on this subject, but my critic, 
finding the system I recommended is not to be condemned, takes 
a fresh tack and accuses me of borrowing it from Thompson's 
“ Gardeners’ Assistant.” Well, drowning men, we know, will 
catch at straws ; but there is no straw here to catch at, for it so 
happens that Mr. Thompson recommends quite the opposite 
system— i.e., fan-training. So much for fast writing without 
thinking. 
As 1 bad the advantage of learning something about training 
from Mr. Thompson personally, and on his own favourite trees, 
my “ ignorance ” of the subject must arise from insurmountable 
natural causes, and not from the fact of having had no oppor¬ 
tunities. 
I do not wish to take up any more of your space with personal 
matters which are of no use to gardeners, therefore I will thank 
my friends to spare themselves the trouble of sending me any 
more papers in which I may have the honour to be noticed.— 
Wm, Taylor. 
NOTES ON CIRCUIT.—No. 3. 
There is one great advantage that I have gained in my wan¬ 
derings as a judge, that I come to know those with whom I have 
been Jong acquainted by their writings, and concerning whom I 
have often conjectured what manner of persons they were in the 
flesh. Amongst those writers of the Journal whose communications 
are always full of sound teaching and practical common sense are 
Mr. Pettigrew the gardener at Cardiff Castle and Mr. Muir the 
gardener at Margam Park. My visit to Cardiff to judge at their 
first Rose Show, of w T hich I have already given some account, gave 
me the opportunity of making their acquaintance and of finding 
that I had not misjudged the writers. The cordiality with which 
I was welcomed by Mr. Pettigrew made my visit most agreeable, 
and when under his guidance I went through the grounds of 
Cardiff Castle I had a time of much enjoyment. 
Cardiff Castle is well known as one of the seats of the Marquis 
of Bute, and who also owns the rapidly increasing town which 
has sprung into such importance in South Wales as the port from 
whence so much of the coal found in this portion of the United 
Kingdom is exported. The Castle is quite close upon the streets 
of the town, as in so many of our large feudal properties ; and 
the grounds which surround it tend to take off the idea of dreari¬ 
ness which a town, however bustling it may be, must have whose 
chief export is coal. The Castle itself is a fine building, and large 
sums of money have been spent upon it by the pres-ent owner. 
Interiors have little interest for me, and I was therefore more 
concerned with the surroundings. The pleasure grounds are taste¬ 
fully laid out; and on the Castle walls facing the south Vines 
have been trained up to a great height, and in this mild climate 
their crops ripen well. It is well known that the outdoor culti¬ 
vation of the Grape has been specially tried by the Marquis of 
Bute, but as the vineyards are some three miles away I was not 
able to see them. The Sophia Gardens, comprising eleven acres, 
have been given as a recreation ground to the inhabitants and are 
w T ell kept. The kitchen gardens comprise about eight acres, and 
I need not say with so experienced a gardener as Mr. Pettigrew 
are in excellent order. The amount of glass, however, is by no 
means commensurate with the requirements of such a house, and 
the houses are fewer in number and smaller than I have seen in 
places at all equal to it in importance. There are four vineries 
not large, a Peach house, a greenhouse, a plant stove, Pine stove, 
and eight Pine pits. There was a fine crop of Eastnor Castle 
Melon in one of the houses, and of the many candidates for favour 
in this fruit there are few which can claim superiority to this. It 
is an abundant cropper, and the fruit of first-rate quality. There, 
too, was to be seen in great perfection the Cucumber of which 
notice has been taken in the gardening papers lately—one of Mr. 
Pettigrew’s own raising—Cardiff Castle, and a most valuable 
variety it is, producing large quantities of fairly sized fruit, well 
shaped and of good quality. What a great mistake it is to grow 
huge Cucumbers 1 When people tell you that they have Cucumbers 
2k feet long one can only express regret that they should think so 
much of size. Few persons want a Cucumber to be put on a table 
in its natural state, and even if they did it would be no advan¬ 
tage to have one stretching over any dish you might put it upon. 
But as they are nearly always cut up before being served the 
point to aim at is simply quality and not size, and this quality 
Cardiff Castle most thoroughly possesses. I saw here a plan 
which I have not noticed anywhere else. Round the collar of the 
plants of Melons there was placed what seemed to me, and I 
believe was, about 3 inches of the rim of a large pot, making a 
circular protection to it; and the reason of this was in watering 
to prevent any water falling on the neck of the plant, which Mr. 
Pettigrew considered the cause of much of the canker and decay 
that take Diace in Melons, and for the same reason a pane of glass 
was placed against the stem of the Cucumber plants. They 
received abundance of moisture, but not on the collar of the plant, 
and nothing could exceed their vigour and health. In the Peach 
house I also noticed what was to me a novel plan. The front 
lights of the house were hung on pivots, so that the upper surface 
of the leaves of the Peach trees which were trained on the trellises 
might be syringed as well as the under surface, and thus the 
attacks of red spider be prevented. No trace of that pest was 
anywhere to be seen. 
The Vines were in the most luxuriant health, and of course 
(for do we not find it so everywhere ?) the staple varieties were 
Black Hamburgh for black Grapes and Muscat of Alexandria for 
white. Notwithstanding the numerous claimants to public favour 
that have appeared of late years these two favourites hold their 
own against all comers. Dukes, and Champions, and Doctors, 
and ladies even, may for a brief season jostle them out; but after 
all the gardener knows that these are dependable and relies on 
them chiefly. Alicante and Gros Colman were also grown on 
account of their keeping qualities, and in every large establish¬ 
ment some of the newer kinds are sure to be grown ; but where the 
number of varieties is necessarily limited these two old favourites 
will afford the chief supply. By-the-by, in my little house I 
have been greatly annoyed by mice eating the Grapes. I have 
invited them to eat toasted cheese served up in a neat little 
apparatus, but they decline it, and seem to be vegetarians, for the 
Grapes are nibbled and eaten and the cheese left. The Pines 
exhibited the same high state of culture as the rest of the fruit, 
and were perfectly free from any insect pest. 
The plant houses were full of well-grown plants, such as are 
usually to be found in such establishments—Eucharis amazonica 
in large numbers and fine plants ; Azaleas ; Coleus, some grand 
plants prepared for exhibition, but nothing unusual. In the 
grounds the Roses on Manetti stocks were very fine, and had the 
w'eather been more favourable Mr. Pettigrew would have been 
able to exhibit blooms equal to those shown at our large exhi¬ 
bitions. At the Exhibition there the Marquis of Bute gave a prize 
for the best twelve blooms of the York-and-Lancaster Rose. 
Several boxes were exhibited, and the prize was won by Mr. 
Pettigrew. But great was my surprise on visiting the Oxford 
Botanic Gardens next day, under the guidance of Mr. Baxter, to 
be told that the Rose so generally grown and known under that 
title was really not it, but one called Rosa Mundi ; the true York- 
and-Lancaster being an entirely different flower, not so flat, and 
often coming with onc-half of the Rose w r hite and the other red, 
not striped as in the flower ordinarily called by the name. 
It was a matter of great regret to me that I could not remain 
any longer in Cardiff, or pay a visit I had hoped to have done to 
my excellent friend Mr. Llewelyn at Penllergare near Swansea ; 
but exhibitors came crowding thick upon one another, and so I 
was obliged to leave ; but it was a most pleasant visit, and I shall 
not soon forget the courtesy and kindness shown to me by Mr. 
Pettigrew ; and of one thing I felt more than ever assured, that 
now that I had seen and talked with him I could the more readily 
assent to any teachings which he may hereafter favour us with in 
the pages of the Journal.—D., Beal. 
Shading Camellias.—I do not think it is wise to plant 
Camellias against hedges or walls, nor yet wdthin a dozen feet 
of them, because I have always noticed (in Cornwall at all events) 
that when they are so grown they do not produce flowers except 
on one side. I have always seen the best Camellias grown 
fully exposed to the sun, but protected by tall-growing trees 
