FEBRUARY. 
53 
I a man of leisure, and with my present love for good fruit, I should 
devote a small house, heated, entirely to the culture of this unequalled 
Nectarine, either planting the trees in the borders or growing them in 
pots. In mentioning the planting of trees in the borders of orchard- 
houses, I am reminded of some Peach-Apricots which I have in the 
borders of one of my houses. These are lifted every second year; their 
healthy, fruitful state is quite remarkable; they are growing in a very 
stiff yellowish loam, with a small quantity of manure as a top dressing. 
1 may perhaps be pardoned for mentioning my favourite cheap descrip¬ 
tion of orchard-house for planting out trees; it is the span-roofed, 
12 to 14 feet wide, and 8 to 9 feet in height; the trees may be 
planted in the borders on each side, and form a delightful and fruitful 
avenue. Pears, Plums, Cherries and Apples should be grown as 
pyramids ; Peaches, Nectarines, and Apricots as dwarf standards, or 
(to use a more explicit term) bushes. A portion of the house should 
be devoted to the latter; as they require more heat when ripening, it 
would perhaps be better to have the different kinds of fruit in groups; 
thus in a house, say 140 feet long and 14 feet wide, for seven kinds of 
fruit—viz.. Apples, Apricots, Plums, Peaches, Nectarines, Cherries, 
and Pears—twenty feet of each border may be allotted to each kind. 
You will thus, we will say, enter your house through an avenue of 
Apples—then Pears—then Plums—then Cherries, Apricots, Peaches, 
and Nectarines following. You will thus pass through areal miniature 
orchard under glass. These houses may be built with Oak posts, and 
either boards or glass at the sides, according to taste and economy. 
They are the cheapest of all houses, the most easily ventilated, and if 
made to face endwise N.E. and S.W., so that the sun shines down the 
centre the best portion of the day, no injurious shading will take place. 
I fear I have been tedious; but there are so many modes of adapting 
houses to fruit-tree culture—all more or less eligible—and some new 
ideas that have occurred to me since I wrote the fourth edition of the 
Orchard Houi^e, that your readers will, I trust, pardon the length of 
this article. I have not changed my ideas with regard to the eligibility 
of fruit-tree culture in pots—it is so agreeable to be able to remove a 
Peach-tree loaded with fruit to the open air to give them more flavour 
and colour, or to the hall or dining-room, or to be able to retard a tree or 
two for some special occasion. It is, indeed, a delightful mode ; and 
although it may not satisfy those who with true vulgarity wish every¬ 
thing “ to pay,” it will give real satisfaction to the lover of the good 
and beautiful. 
Thos. Rivers. 
A FEW QUESTIONS TO YOUNG GARDENERS. 
A NOTE in the Gardener s ('hronicle informs me that a Superintendent 
for undertaking the management of the Horticultural Society’s Garden 
at Chiswick is yet wanted, ad-ling “ none of tlie candidates having been 
found to possess all the qualifications v\'hich the Council are desirous of 
securing.” This sentence appears to me so full of import and signifi- 
