266 
THE LADIES* MAGAZINE OP GARDENING. 
There had been little or no mignonette sown in the gardens here till 
this season; I sowed a good deal round the beds and borders, but owing 
to our cold, wet, clay soil, and the unfavourable season, in many parts it 
either never came up, or so weak that it dwindled off afterwards ; but on 
some parts of the higher and dryer grounds it came up tolerably well, 
which has given me plenty to transplant at this more favourable season into 
the less congenial soils, where it had gone off; and by my box treatment 
it is now promising to do well. Until it gets proper vigour, I keep pick¬ 
ing out the blossom-buds as soon as I can detect them, or pinch back the 
shoots to make them strong and stocky plants. Those I leave after 
thinning I treat just in the same manner as the transplanted ones; so that 
one single plant only left, becomes a much finer specimen than by leaving 
more. The usual slovenly manner of leaving it to ramble where it 
chooses, and all the plants which spring up from the seed, is always dis¬ 
agreeable to the sight; and it soon exhausts itself by rambling seeds and 
blossom. 
Some plants are trained to a single stem, and tied to a stake; and these 
may be either trained to form into a bushy head at any convenient height* 
or spurred into the first joint, so as to have them in blossom the whole 
height of the stem, as far as it may be desired. 
Leeds, 
July 17th, 1841. 
ON THE VERBENA TEUCROIDES, &c. 
BY J. M. 
Madam, —It may be deemed sadly uncourteous to intrude upon you ira 
this grumbling fashion, but really I cannot help it, as I think you have 
been most unwarrantably severe in your condemnation of the Verbena 
Teucroides; uniformly denouncing it as of a coarse and weedy habit, 
falling short of the expectations formed of it. Now, the whole tribe of 
Verbenas are with me especial favourites, the objects, I assure you, of my 
peculiar care ; and charming as many of them are, there are few, if any, 
that I prefer to the Teucroides: it does not, I confess, possess the 
brilliancy of colour or compactness of habit that happily renders some 
of its congeners so resistless; but the w T ant of these is far more than com¬ 
pensated by its exquisite perfume—a real quality, far outweighing any 
or all of its supposed defects, and capable of securing it an undying popu¬ 
larity, and a corner in the affections of the cultivator, when those posses- 
ing far more gaudy exteriors have blazed their day and are forgotten. 
