20 
THE FLORIST. 
low-minded. It shall be our endeavour to cater for your simple and 
sensible tastes ; and now r we have your introduction, let us have 
some of your practice. Never mind the rudeness of its dress. It is 
no objection in our eyes that a gardener has a horny hand, and wears 
a blue apron, if, in the various relations of life, his conduct is irre¬ 
proachable.] 
FERNS AND FLOWERS. 
If you have a spare corner in your pages, allow me to say a word to 
those who have a spare corner in their gardens, particularly if it be 
one too shady for the growth of flowers. I advise all such to occupy 
it with a fernery, which seems to me an almost essential addition to 
the flower-garden, not only on account of the beauty of the plants 
themselves, but of their use in affording a most valuable addition to 
the ladies’ bouquet. No foliage is so beautiful, or displays the 
brilliancy of those flowers usually chosen for the vase so well as 
the graceful fronds of many kinds of fern. For this purpose, the 
Female fern, the Brittle fern, the Common brake, the Beech and Oak 
ferns, the Broad ferns, the Prickly fern, the Royal fern, and the com¬ 
mon Polypody, may be selected as very hardy, and very easy to ob¬ 
tain. If, however, the object in constructing a fernery be merely, 
as it mostly is, the occupation of some otherwise unsightly spot in 
the garden, attention should be especially paid to arrangement of 
the plants ; those species which partially retain their fronds through¬ 
out the winter should be regularly interspersed with those which 
may be termed deciduous, so as to preserve over the rock-work a 
lively greenness through the winter months. The Hard fern, the 
Holly fern, the Prickly ferns, the green Spleenwort, the common Po¬ 
lypody, the black Spleenwort, and the Hart’s tongue, are mostly more 
or less in foliage the year round ; and are at all times amongst the 
most ornamental of this interesting family in the vegetable kingdom. 
Levey, Robson, and Franklyn, Great 3Ne\v Street, Fetter Lane. 
