OCTOBER 10.] 
THE COTTAGE GA11DENER. 
10 
an establishment possessing only a very few acres might 
be made the epitome of a nobleman’s seat. We must 
here deprecate the idea of compelling parties peram¬ 
bulating gardens to pass through every little flight of 
I fancy which the peculiar bent of the proprietor has 
! called into being. Rather, wo say, so place them with 
such significant indications on the face of them, as that 
the visitor or stranger may at once know their purpose, 
I and possess the power of passing by and not through 
them, if his taste so inclines. 
We must now beat a hasty retreat, and get to the 
kitchen or fruit-garden, for we begin to feel that we have 
! been poaching on the manor of our good friends Messrs. 
Beaton and Fish. We crave pardon for the liberty 
taken, and shall not be surprised to find these gentlemen 
I before long doling out a chapter on plums or peaches in 
| a retributive way. 
; Boundary matters and such preliminaries toward the 
I establishment of a good garden being passed, come we 
| now to the kitchen and fruit-garden, which we may sup- 
| pose partially or wholly surrounded, as the case may be, 
by what are termed “ slips.” The use of such may not 
be apparent to a stranger, and we may as well talk a, 
little about these appendages, and their uses. There is 
no special reason why a slip should form an appendage 
of a garden, as far as the culture of fruit-trees or vege¬ 
tables are concerned, excepting that walls being expen¬ 
sive things, the exterior surface of walling around the 
gardens offers an opportunity for the culture of certain 
fruits not to be lost sight of. Well, then, since the wall¬ 
ing must be made use of, protection must be afforded 
against the depredations or trespass of either bipeds or 
quadrupeds: lrcnce the necessity of an outward enclo¬ 
sure, and hence the origin of ■“ slips.” 
Now, in plans of small calibre, a slip may subserve a 
double purpose. After apportioning a border to the 
wall-trees, and a walk in front, together with a row of 
standard or espalier fruit-trees on the other side of the 
j walk, the remainder may be made to subserve decora¬ 
tive purposes, and become an adjunct of the pleasure- 
j grounds. In such a ease it is well to plant standard and 
i dwarf trees alternately, and perhaps some bush-fruit; 
this will produce an irregular outline, quite compatible 
with the effect sought to be produced by the shrubbery 
adjoining. The trained or fancy espaliers will, of course, 
be planted in the kitchen-garden. By this mode there 
need be no walk between the slip and the pleasure- 
ground, but the shrubs may run into and mingle with 
the fruit-trees. This, of course, is supposing that room 
is scarce, and that the kitchen-garden joins some portion 
of the dress grounds. 
Thus much about the slips; we must now give atten¬ 
tion to the walls. It is in general allowed, that a paral¬ 
lelogram is the best form, and there seems no reason to 
depart from it. Admitting such, it would seem the best 
policy, under the present conditions of fruit culture, to 
make the side walls (running north and south) about 
one-third longer than each of the two ends; for by these 
means a much greater extent of comfortable aspects 
may be produced, and a much smaller extent of northern 
aspect—the most useless of any. There will of course 
be less of direct south, but this we do not care for; 
l there will be sufficient for a few peaches and nectarines, 
I or perhaps vines and figs ; the rest may be grown well 
I in three parts of the kingdom on the east and west 
aspects, provided the borders are not deep. In this 
j opinion wo may have many practical men against us, 
; but this will not deter us from offering such advice, 
| coupled, as it ever will be on our part, by a cautious 
mode of procedure in planting and the use of plat¬ 
forms. 
Now, with regard to the direction of tlio walls; there 
seems no reason to depart from the old practice of “ the 
cardinal points;” nevertheless it will sometimes happen 
that they must be in some degree departed from, on 
account of the situation of the mansion, or other matters. 
The subject must now pass on to another occasion, 
when we must force our way through the kitchen-garden 
doors, and see what can be done as to interior arrange- 1 
ments. R. Errington. 
THE ELOWER-GARDEN. 
We have a plan in The Cottage Gardener which, 
although we never say anything about it, must have 
boen seen all along, and that is—that none of the writers 
engaged regularly on the work, interfere with each other’s 
plans or opinions, and thus we get rid of puffs, praises, 
wranglings, and all kinds of uncharitableness which 
used to be the leading features in our periodicals. 
Happily, other works on gardening and botany are now 
conducted more like our Cottage Gardener than such 
works used to be; and 1 hope to live to see the day when 
all envy, hatred, and malice shall be swept away from 
the surface of our gardening literature. With us, in 
these pages, every tub stands on its own bottom, brimful 
of entertainment and instruction, and if one of us should 
so far deviate from his common path as to come in con¬ 
tact with a fellow-tub, no harm can come of it, beyond a 
scratch or two—that is all. And even that 1 shall 
escape this time, on coming in contact with a tub of 
sound bottom ; for to tell the truth, I very much wish 
to back Mr. Erring ton in his plan of growing goose¬ 
berries on espaliers—but entirely for the benefit of his 
readers. I do not recollect having ever entered a small 
garden where no gardener was kept, or where a man of 
that stamp was not called in to dress the trees occa¬ 
sionally, but I saw the gooseberry bushes mismanaged 
beyond every thing else in the garden. I think his plan 
of growing tins fruit is one of his very best arrangements; 
and I hope be is not half done with it yet. To my own 
personal knowledge, there is not one out of a dozen of 
those bandy men who job about “ dressing trees,” knows 
even how to prune a gooseberry tree properly. Here, 
where people say we carry things by the weiglit ol the 
purse, we find Mr. Erringtou’s plan the best and most 
economical way of getting a large crop on a small space, 
and the easiest way of securing it from fruit suclcers when 
we have got it. 
China-asters. —The most curious thing I heard of 
this season was a question asking, “If China-asters 
were got by cuttings?” but recollecting that I often 
asked questions of that nature myself, I give heed to it, 
and the more, as my own Cluna-asters were seldom more 
noticed than they have been this very season, notwith¬ 
standing all the dry weather they had encountered while 
yet in their infancy. Still, I fear they are not altogether 
what they should be, for it was only the other day that 
two great London gardeners went over the garden with 
me, one of whom beats me out and out with his grapes, 
and the other grows my seedling geranium Punch more 
like Master Punch himself than any of the thousands 
of them he saw with me here; and he was so elated with 
his success, that he overlooked my success with the 
China-asters, and even forgot that he saw anything of 
the sort until he was asked by his fellow-traveller, on 
their way home, what he thought of them ! Now, this 
is very easily accounted for: the great grape grower is 
also a great fancier of good China-asters, and other good 
things in the florist’s way, and of course such things 
take his notice wherever and whenever he meets with 
them ; and to tell the truth, I did not expect that our 
China-asters would attract the notice of strangers this 
season, for I had them planted very differently from the 
usual way, at least, from the way they are generally 
planted in large places. It is well-known that vve plant 
many things here to produce shading, or shades of 
