1877 . ] 
LEAF-BEDDING.-BOUVAEDIAS AS DECOKATIVE PLANTS. 
147 
this extra heat suits the Uogiera well, and it bears more heat if you want it to 
flower earlier in winter—sav, December. 
I rank this plant certainly equal, and in some respects superior, to lAiculia 
(jratisshna^ as it is of better habit, being more comeatable ; the leaves can be 
used in nosegays with their flowers, and it can be had in flower at all seasons. I got 
my stock from Linden, who sent it out some years ago, and I have not regretted 
keeping to my old love which, from the first, I pronounced to be a real gem. Who¬ 
ever takes it in hand will, I am sure, thank me for bringing it to their notice, 
and more especially those who must have choice flowers to the fore for nosegays, 
tl'c. I am not too sanguine in saying that were I a florist and wanted a speciality, 
this certainly would be either first, second, or third on my list of pets. Several 
connoisseurs in plants going through here have remarked, “ Yes ! that is a good 
thing, but I have always seen it dying with too much heat, and surfeited with 
too much gouty peat, which is only verified by your plants.”— Henry Knight, 
Floors Gardens, 
CHOICE OF MATERIALS FOR LEAF-BEDDING. 
HAVE never admired the red leaves of the present day in flower-gardens, 
red paint is quite at home on a waggon-wheel, and dark-brown does its 
work at little cost on a field-gate ; but the grand greens which we call 
‘‘grass-green,” and “pea-green,” and “sea-green,” give us the normal colour 
of most healthy plants everywhere, and form by far the fittest foil to the fairest 
flowers, as witnessed in the case of the Eose and the Lily. So well does the ex¬ 
hibitor of Eoses understand this, that we see the fair fronds of the Maidenhair 
fern, and the velvety moss, used as a carpeting for setting-off his prize-blooms. 
There is a place for most things in a well-ordered garden, and we look with 
pleasure to see them each, as it were, at home. For instance, we admire the 
Houseleek on the cottage-roof, where it has held possession for perhaps 100 years, 
and we look for a kitchen-garden—the English equivalent expression for a Scotch 
kail-yard—to contain various pot-herbs, a principal one being kail of various forms 
and colours; but when we see the kail forsaking its proper home and taking to 
the flower-garden, for the sake of displaying its foliage there—for be it known 
that its homely yellow flowers produced in May are worthy of no such honour, 
“ The force of nonsense could no farther go; 
They robbed the pot to make a gaudy show.” 
—Alex. Forsyth, Salford. 
BOUVARDIAS AS DECORATIVE PLANTS. 
« T is only within the last few years that these charming plants have 
become popular favourites. Who amongst us, a dozen years ago, would 
have recognised, in the miserable straggling morsels of Bouvardias then 
‘V generally seen, their capability of producing, by a better-understood system 
of cultivation, that compact and dense habit of growth, with fresh foliage 
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