130 
THE LADIES MAGAZINE OP GARDENING. 
more artificial, there are certain laws which regulate their growth, and 
certain conditions requisite in order to keep them in a high state of health 
and beauty. Thus, the greater part of greenhouse plants which are 
sufficiently hardy to endure the open air in the summer months, if planted 
in a sheltered border, attain in a short time twice their orioinal size. 
This is no doubt owing 1 in a great measure to the roots not being confined 
as they are in pots, but multiplying and ramifying in all directions in 
search of food, sending that food upwards into the stem, branches, and 
leaves, and so causing these parts to increase in size with great rapidity. 
This, then, is nature’s method of cultivation, and the nearer we follow 
her example when we can, the more likely we are to succeed. Similar 
remarks apply to light and also to water, because both of these have much 
to do in the difference of the growth of the plants just mentioned. 
But plants indigenous to warmer countries will not live out of doors 
during winter in England, and therefore we are obliged to have recourse 
to some artificial mode of protection, and of course that is the best mode 
in which we approach most nearly to natural circumstances. Hence the 
use of the Conservatory where many of the plants are planted in the 
border, and where all receive as much light as an artificial structure can 
admit. We can never therefore expect to grow plants so well in rooms 
as in buildings of this description, particularly in the winter months when 
the windows cannot be opened, or the plants with safety placed for any 
length of time on the outside. It must, therefore, be a general principle 
in their cultivation, to give them all the light possible in winter by placing 
them close to the window ; and in the summer months in. a sheltered 
situation out of doors. Although this situation is the best place for these 
plants in summer, yet in some places this may not be convenient, and in 
others it may be desirable to have them on the outside of the window or 
on a balcony erected there for that purpose, where they will grow and 
flower under the eye, and, if sweet-scented, perfume the air of the room 
when the window is opened on a fine summer evening. In this case it is 
necessary to have some means of protection from the burning heat of the 
mid-day sun, which is very much increased by the reflection of the rays 
from the wall of the house. It should never be forgotten that the 
management all along has been very artificial, the leaves and shoots have 
been formed in a dark room, the roots are confined to pots and cannot 
find nourishment so quickly as it is drawn from the leaves, and therefore 
if we have deprived the plant by artificial means of providing a certain 
quantity of food, we must also take care to counteract the other force— 
the sun upon the leaves—which if not done, more moisture will be drawn 
off than the roots can supply, and the result of this treatment will be, as 
