February 13.J 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
305 
growth is made, it is ready for a cutting, and the cutting 
will root nearly as fast as one of a verbena under the 
same light; and cuttings of it made to the end of April, 
will flower the same season. I am not sure if it has 
seeded with any one yet, and if it has, I would not put 
much faith in the seeds until I proved them, as it is itself 
only an accidental sport from the blue one. The blue one, 
or Campanula carpatica, ought also to be in every flower- 
garden. There is no more trouble with that either, than 
with a daisy. Seeds of it sown any time next March, 
and treated as they ought, wall flower from the middle of 
August till the frost; and old plants of it taken up on a 
fine day at the end of February, put by in the potting- 
slied until the first rainy day, then divided into little 
pieces, and put in a basket, will be ready to plant out 
when the first fine day comes; and if the end of April, 
or the month of May be very dry, the bed or rows ought 
to be watered, and they would be in flower early in June, 
and continue so until the seedlings were fit to take their 
jflaces. But to have them in bloom from the first of 
July to October, about the second week in April is the 
right time to take up old plants of them for dividing. 
For mixed beds or borders, some of the old plants should 
not be disturbed, as these would come iu earlier than 
the transplanted ones, and, of course, would be over 
much earlier in proportion. It is very singular, but it 
is certainly a fact, that many, or say all the summer¬ 
flowering herbaceous plants which creep about by their 
roots, or by stolons, which are underground branches 
aud not true roots, will flower from twice to four times 
their natural time, or usual length of time, if they are 
taken up in the spring before they make much growth, 
and are divided, like as I have just said about these cam¬ 
panulas ; and it is as likely as not, that there are many 
more of the Campanulas themselves that would yield a 
good profit by the same treatment. We only use two 
sorts at present that way, the carpatica, and the much 
smaller one, pumtta, both blue, and both having white 
varieties. There is another nice one as small as pumila, 
with a much larger flower, which is called pulla, and of 
the taller sorts there is no end to them. 
There are a great number of hardy plants in the way 
of composites, or with aster-looking flowers; and many 
of them might be had in flower more than double the 
usual time if they were treated after the manner of the 
campanulas. I used to know a great many of these old- 
fashioned plants, aud not a bit the worse for being so; 
but I forget many of them, as one so seldom meets 
with anything now-a-days which is thought much of, 
unless it be new, or recently introduced ; but I make no 
doubt about there being numbers of bedding hardy 
plants now neglected in botanic arrangements, or in 
shrubbery borders, and the hint I wish to convey re¬ 
specting them is this:—When the borders are having 
their spring dressing, let side pieces from old patches of 
herbaceous plants be divided a little, and reset near to 
the established plant or patch, and let them be looked 
after for the rest of the season, and see they have no 
lack of water, or air, or thinning, or supports, or, indeed, 
in any of their needs. Then mark how much longer 
they will keep in flower than the old plant; that is on 
the supposition that they belong to the right section of 
herbaceous for that experiment. Note down the result; 
try again and again if you should fail in every one in¬ 
stance ; because you did not hit just on the exact way it 
should be done at first. There is not a plant in the 
whole garden that I would let pass at the spring dressing 
without trying some experiment or another with it, so 
that I might know as much about it as anybody else, if 
not more. It must be very tiresome to have to send to 
The Cottage Gardener to ask every little thing one 
would like to know about flowers, and, if so, why not try 
and learn by experiments; which if they do not turn out 
to any good, no one need be the wiser; depend on it, the 
spade, the fork, and the trowel at work on a long border 
of old plants, could turn up more facts than the pen of 
the best writer amongst us. 
Before the spring propagation begins in earnest, we 
ought to have a clear understanding about the number 
of plants that we may require of the different varieties, 
and then to put in a certain per centage of cuttings over 
and above the actual number of plants required; and 
tli is additional stock will vary in different situations. 
There are kinds of soil in which all the Verbenas, for 
instance, will grow away as fast as possible as soon as 
they are let free into the beds; and in other soils many 
of them will stand still, as it were, for a while, without 
moving or making a single additional leaf, and, there¬ 
fore, are more liable to mishaps; and it is the same with 
almost all the plants in use. Some do well, and some 
do not: and what succeeds best in one place may be the 
most difficult to get established a mile off. Nothing 
short of actual practice, therefore, can determine how 
many of this or that kind of plant one ought to have for 
a given bed. The best rule is to have plenty at any 
rate. Except in the neighbourhood of London, I have 
not seen for many years how flower beds are first 
planted; but there, 1 think, I have seen the two ex¬ 
tremes ; that is, the soil in the beds almost hidden the first 
day of planting, or so thinly furnished that it takes five 
or six weeks before the beds are full. I hold with thick 
planting, if I had to pull out some of the plants soon 
afterwards. Where the stock is limited, or the means 
of providing it are on a narrow scale, I know of no 
better way than that of transplanting annuals in the 
intermediate spaces between the permanent plants, as I 
have often recommended; and this is just the time to 
think of all this. Sow lots of them here and there, or 
anywhere, in the shrubbery borders and other places, 
and if the half of them do well, what an advantage it 
will be next May at planting-out time, if you should 
happen to come too short of anything; or say, that a 
number of new plants are just come home to be propa¬ 
gated from; it may be the first of May before a proper 
stock is obtained from some of them, and the end of the 
month ere they are sufficiently hardened for planting 
out, without something to take their places. All this 
time, what are wo to do but wish that we had thought of 
all tliis iu time. “ Here is a long narrow bed, or small 
circle, and from what I have read about the White Cam¬ 
panula carpatica in the Cottage Gardener, I have 
resolved to have it planted this season with that very 
plant. I have just bought a couple of nice plants of it, 
which they say may be increased from cuttings as fast 
as Verbenas.” But somehow or other, let us suppose, 
the plants are not strong enough to turn out till the end 
of May; but that all this was seen at the end of April; 
and having a stock of early spring-sown annuals to take 
our choice from, the difficulty is got over at once. We can 
even keep to the colour. White Virginian Stock just 
opening its first flowers will do; the white with dark 
spots, Nemophila maculata, the same; Navel-wort also; 
or White Candy tuft from seed self-sown last autumn; 
any of these will bloom in May, and as soon as they 
appear to fade, pull them up and put in the Campanula, 
and so on with many, many other plants and beds. 
If Sweet peas cannot be forced a little like kitchen- 
garden peas for an early crop, put in a row of it imme¬ 
diately for early bouquets. Cornflowers are extremely 
! pretty in bouquets, and you cannot have them too early 
or too late. Make a sowing of them also without delay. 
The book name for the best two kinds of them is Cen- 
taurea Cyanus, this is the sky blue one; and C. depressa 
is a different blue, with purple or red bottoms to the 
florets; and there are two more shades of these—one 
with a speckled flower much lighter than the blues, and 
one pure white. These are the four fit for bouquets; 
but there is no end to their variations. These simple 
