302 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ October 2, 1884. 
succession of lovely blooms. Adam, flesh, and Madame de St. Joseph, 
fawn, shaded salmon pink, was very useful early in the season, but have 
not continued in a free-flowering state, but we have a few blooms 
occasionally. Cecil Brunner is a beautiful Eose, it forms its blooms (the 
colour of which is flesh, with salmon centre) iu spreading clusters of two 
or three dozen ; it is a grand summer and autumn-blooming Eose, and 
well adapted for massing in large beds. Madame Berard is a very 
strong-growing Eose ; it is not very free-flowering, but what blooms we 
have had were extremely good.—A. Young. 
TUBEROUS BEGONIA.S IN BEDS. 
So exceedingly hot has been the summer, day after day and 
week after week being cloudless, that it would have been a matter 
of surprise if these moisture-loving plants had grown freely and 
flowered profusely in beds in the open air in all gardens and 
districts. Where the soil is the richest and deepest, the rainfall 
the greatest, and the summer the coolest, there the plants have 
flourished the best during the summer that is now drawing to a 
clo.-e. In Ireland, Scotland, and the west of England the plants 
are the most luxuriant and the beds the most brilliant this year 
—a fact which disposes of the fallacy that is still indulged in by 
some persons, that these plants can only be well grown outdoors 
in the sunny south. They would appear to be very much like 
Celery and Asters in their requirements after being established 
in the beds, and previous to that they seem to enjoy much the 
same treatment as well-prepared Potatoes. Place tubers of the 
latter in small pots in liea% grow the plants until they are a foot 
or two high and need stakes to support them, allow the pots to 
be densely packed with roots, then plant. If strong sturdy 
plants follow and good crops, it will be little short of a miracle; 
but start the tubers in light soil in cool frames or in boxes, and 
when broad thick leaves are just unfolding and fat stems just 
forming, when frost has passed, then plant carefully in good soil 
without breaking the roots, and sturdy growth follows. It is the 
same with Begonias—draw them, coddle them, roast them or 
steam the n for several weeks in the spring and early summer, 
then turn them into the open ground, and nothing can be expected 
but a general shrivelling and collapse. 
These remarks are suggested by an inspection of ninety 
thousand Tuberous Begonias now growing and flowering in tlie 
open grounds in—as nearly everybody will anticipate—one of the 
nurseries of Messrs. J. Laing & Co., Forest Hill. There, in a posi¬ 
tion as fully exposed as possible, without either shelter or shade 
near them, are some sixty beds, each about bO yards long, just a 
mass of stout green foliage and sparkling flowers. It is, or rather 
w'as a week ago, a wonderful sight. The plants are dwarfer than 
usual, owing to the growth having been arrested by the extreme 
heat, but this, perhaps, shows the flowers the more clearly. Be 
that as it may, they quite eclipse the Zonal Pelargoniums, and 
will continue attractive until, like Dahlias, they are cut down by 
frost. 
It is interesting to observe that the varieties are produced 
from seed without any great variation in colour. All the plants 
in the beds are seedlings raised in January of the present year, 
and as a rule they are in blocks of colour. Here we find a bed 
nearly all of white or blush-tinted varieties ; next a bed in which 
ruse and pink varieties prevail; then rows of soft scarlet, pure 
scarlet, dazzling orange scarlet, crimson in light and deep shades 
approaching to maroon. The tints are by no means uniform 
nor the varieties identical but they are sufficiently so for grouping 
purposes. A few plants produce flowers finer than the others — 
larger, rounder, thicker in the texture of the petals, with stouter 
stalks, or an advance in colour—ihese are taken up, potted, 
arranged under glass as parents of the next generation of these 
beautiful flowers. No plants “ lift ” better than these. Cai-e- 
fully handled and attended to, they do not lose a leaf and scarcely 
a flower. They appear to receive little or no check, for they may 
be potted one day and the flowers hybridised the next. Wonderful 
in substance are these selected flowers on plants grown in beds 
—“like leather ’ is a common remark, and every endeavour is 
being made to raise varieties with stems proportionately stout, so 
as to hold up the flowers, firm and more or less erect, after the 
manner of Auriculas. That is the object now Hundreds of 
plan'^s have stems so stout that no stakes are needed to support 
them, and if storms should be sufficiently violent to break' th in 
there will be little else left iu gardens. The yellow varieties do 
not ajipeav to be so good as the others for bedding purposes. 
They are very beautiful in pots, and as a more vigor ms habit 
will be imjjarted to future varieties they will be the better- 
adapted for garden decoration. Pure white flowers under glass 
do not as a rule retain their pui-ity in the open air, or rather the 
seedlings from them do not, but are slightly rose-tinted; still 
ther-e are a few promising exceptions, and a bed of pure white 
Begonias is apparently attainable. 
Possibly the readiness with which the plants under notice 
transplant and establish themselves so quickly may be in a small 
degree atti-ibutable to the method of planting in the first 
instance. The ground where the buds are is not far removed 
from clay—in winter like putty, in summer baking like bricks. 
That is not Begonia soil, nor is it easy to render the whole bulk 
suitable, it was easier to draw deep drills as if for sowing Peas. 
Fill with a suitable mixture of loam and decaye t vegetable matter, 
then insert the plants. That is what was done. The whole 
surface of the beds was covered vith cocoa-nut fibre i-efuse, 
water was given in summer unstintingly, and thus they passed 
through the hot ordeal; the roots are thus bushy and “ at 
home,” and the plants in the best condition for transferring to 
pots if needed; but, as above intimated, only a very small per¬ 
centage will be so treated, the bulk will be lel't to be cut down by 
frost the tubers then being taken up, stored, and dried like so 
many small Potatoes. 
These one-year-old tubers make the finest of plants for 
growing in beds another year, also handsome specimens for 
pots. A great sj)an roofed house is fided with Begonias, and 
throughout the summer has been a brilliant mass of splendid 
flowers, hundreds of the stems of the plants being from 2 to 
3 inches in circumference These fine plants, with their strikingly 
beautiful flowers, were taken up from the beds last year and 
potted the same as others are being potted now A group of 
them of commanding excellence was arranged at the Crystal 
Palace Rose Show early in July, and several of the same plants 
figiired prominently in the still larger arrangement at the Dahlia 
Show in September. Tuberous Begonias, then, are tractable 
plants, sti’ikingly and continuously beautiful; and when at last 
their term, which is quite long enough, expires, they are extremely 
accommodating, for they can be puf. out of the way in sheds or 
O’ her suitable posi ions, and the valuable stage space in green¬ 
houses and conservatories be occupied with something else. 
A remarkable fact that should be recorded iu connection with 
the Begonia beds at Forest Hill is this When the beds were 
examined seven years ago the varie'ies were considered remark¬ 
ably fine; but it is the simple truth to say that out of all the 
thousands now, or recently, flowering, not a score could be 
selec ed for their comparative inferiority that are not fully equal 
to, or excelling iu merit, the best that were grown at the time 
stated. Some of the older forms are yet effective, either grown 
as large specimens or the slender drooping forms in baskets; 
but neither in colour, si e, form, nor texture of flowers do they 
approach the best varieties of the present time. 
There is much to be seen besides Begonias in the establish¬ 
ments of the Messrs. Laing. Fruit trees, Roses, Vines in pots 
and in fruit, Caladiums, with miscellaneous plants; and provision 
now is being made for Orchids, the stages of a new house for 
these plants consisting of sheets of corrugated Hnc resting on 
iron supports. Thus is the ordinary roofing zinc applied to a 
new purpose, and selected because of its combining economy 
with durability —A Traveller. 
WHITE PINKS FOR FORCING. 
I THINK if Mr. E. Burton would give Lady Blanche a trial he would 
not be disappointed with it as a good white forcing Pink. We have had 
excellent plants in the spring by attending to the following points :—The 
cuttings are taken in March from the earliest forced plants and planted in 
48-sizftd pots. The soil being sandy they root very freely when placed 
where they may receive a slight bottom heat. After the cuttings are 
rooted they are planted into boxes 2 or 3 inches apart, are kept rather 
close until established, when they are hardened, and finally planted out in 
May. Towards the end of October they will have grown fine bushy 
plants, when they are taken up and placed into 32-sized pots, arranged in 
a cold frame, and receive abundance of air all through the winter, when 
they are introduced, as advised by Mr. Barton, “ into gentle moist heat.” 
The following coloured varieties of Pinks adapted f >r forcing we have 
found useful:—Lord Lyons, Derby Day, Newmarket, Mrs. Moore, and Miss 
Pettifer.—A. Young. 
ABOUT HARDY FRUIT CROPS. 
Your volumes already testify that I attach great importance to fruit 
buds being perfectly developed during the previous season. I have been 
silent for some time, but I have nevertheless been interested in “ our 
Journal.” Neither with increased experience have I been the less satisfied 
that even yet we do not attach sufficient importance to fhe influtnee upon 
each other of different seasons. To state that any practical gardener 
ignores spring frosts is simply to insult us ; and what argument is it to 
attach importance to the fact that the frost that killed fruit blossom in 
the S 'Uth left t^'C blossom in the north unharmed ? If your correspondents 
w 11 guarantee that next spring we shall over Britain have a frost, say, 
of 12°, about the 1st of May and none to follow, how safe it would be to 
predict that in the south of England the hardy fruit crops would be 
scarce, whilst in the north we would have an abundance. 
