OCTOBER. 
299 
idea of an iron stove will appear very ridiculous, but, as I have said 
before, it is not what is best, but what we can manage most economically 
that we have to look to ; an iron stove costs very little at first going off, 
and a pennyworth of coke will keep it alight for a whole night, whereas 
a flue runs away with no end of fuel. 
And now a word or two about— 
II. Pits and Frames, 
I have one pit, and very useful it is to me. Here I hope to stow 
away during the winter some of the hardier bedding plants, and to have 
a few Heaths and hard-wooded plants, which do better here than any¬ 
where else. It is a two-light one, six feet long and eight feet wide, the 
front having sashes as well as the top, the sides and end being brick. 
As spring advances, I get a few Roses in here to bloom, and can feast 
my eyes—and nose, too—with a good bloom of Jules Margottin, Geant, 
or Gloire de Dijon. The difficulty, of course, is to keep out frost. I am 
about to try a plan this winter which I saw in use at a gentleman’s 
garden in West Kent this spring, and which I understood to have been 
procured from France, though possibly it may be very well known to 
many of your readers. I have had light frames made the size of the 
sashes, and on these will be nailed with thin laths a single layer of 
wheaten straw’-, and this, I am assured, wull keep out a considerable 
amount of frost, far more so than mats—which, moreover, are very 
expensive—always rotting, and frequently blowing off when most 
wanted to keep on. Should, however, the winter be very severe, as 
the weather-wise folks say is likely to be the case after this hot summer, 
one must then drive a few stakes into the ground about a foot from the 
walls of the pit, and fill up the intervals with straw, and then I think 
one may defy frost. 
My single-light frames are three in number, of various sizes ; one is 
given up to Auriculas, another will winter Pansies, and the third 
Carnations, Picotees, &c. For these, also, I have had straw frames 
made, though their inmates are much more likely to be injured by damp 
and defective draining than by frost. In addition to this, I am about 
to try this winter a straw frame made entirely on the same plan as the 
covers for wintering the Roses in pots. I saw one such at the place I 
mentioned, and if any of your readers have to supply drawing-rooms 
and halls with plants I would strongly recommend these; one can 
retard the bloom in these very w’ell w’ithout making the plants sickly 
and drawn, as they admit air and light sufficient. They can be put up 
and taken down at a moment’s notice, and in any part of the garden that 
one likes ; and although I have quite a gardener’s dread of seeing plants 
that one has taken care of brought into a house to be covered wdth dust, 
blanched like Seakale, and it may be killed outright for want of water, 
yet if it must be done it is as well to make the best of it. 
I have now made a clean breast of it, and think that the readers of 
the Florist, if they have troubled themselves at all about it, know quite 
as much of my ways and means in the gardening line as if they had 
walked all through my little plot, and they will better appreciate the 
difficulties one has to contend with. Time, and means, and space are 
all circumscribed, but perhaps—nay, I am sure it is better it should be 
