308 THE COTTAGE GARDENER. [March 13. 
binding point. Those which may happen to have bad 
roots may at once be disrooted, placed in smaller pots, 
and classed with young plants, or in a private hospital. 
After replunging they may be syringed over, but no 
water applied to the roots for three weeks of such as 
Queens, Providence, &c., and not for at least double that 
time to such shy rooters as the Jamaica. A moist 
atmosphere is the great desideratum, with a very 
moderate amount of ventilation, and a slight shading 
for a few hours on very bright days. Bottom heat 80°; 
atmospheric heat 70° day, 60° night, rising to 85° in 
sunshine. R. Erringtox. 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
| Flower-Beds.— The chief portion of what relates to 
| this part of our work is referred to me, and all the letters 
i asking advice about beds and bedding-plants pass 
through my hands. Month after month, and sometimes 
weekly, for the last eighteen months, I have declined to 
undertake the responsibility of recommending the kinds 
of plants that one should plant in a given set of beds, 
and as often assigned the reasons why I did not do so ; 
yet I am besieged, week after week, by such requests, and 
this week I am threatened with—I know not what— 
punishment, if I do not instantly plant ten beds for a 
correspondent, who, in all likelihood, would see cause to 
differ with me before the first of them was planted, if I 
made the attempt. Lately I have seen nearly a hundred 
plans of flower-gardens, and the way they were planted 
last season, and not two of them were planted alike, yet 
on the whole they were very well planted. No two of 
any profession will suggest exactly the same arrange¬ 
ment, and if they did a third party would immediately 
object to some of the details, and it is more likely to be 
so in fancy gardening than in almost anything else. 
Hence arises the reason why public writers on gardening, 
set their faces against the hopeless task. In matters of 
taste there is no standard rule to appeal to in case of 
difference of opinion, therefore we must all choose for 
ourselves; and to enable us to do so in flower-gardening 
all that I can do is to recommend all such plants as I 
know, or hear of, that are suitable for the purpose; give 
their heights, colours, and treatment, as I have hitherto 
done, am doing, and will continue to do, as long as I am 
in harness. The arranging of these materials I must 
leave to individual choice. A new subscriber wishes 
for what has been said from the beginning of the work, 
and if old subscribers would submit to have the same 
dishes over again, our task would be light indeed. 
Nevertheless, I shall run over the heads of what I have 
already said as opportunity occurs; but I must repent 
once for all, and thus prominently, that it is waste of 
time to ask me, or any other public writer in our line, 
to plant flower-gardens for any one. 
The editor of a gardening periodical sent me two 
packets of seeds the other day, of an entirely new plant 
for bedding out.—Good news this. In his letter he said, 
| “As I perceive you are labouring under a kind of 
Campanula-phobia, I take the opportunity of sending 
you seeds of a new species, which I think will put your 
pet ( Campanula carpatica alba ) out of joint. It is quite 
new, never having been in the country before, and I have 
no doubt will prove a first-rate thing.” This new Cam¬ 
panula is a hardy, or half-hardy perennial from the 
Azores, and is called Vidalii or Vidal's Bell-flower, grows 
erect, two feet high, and branches out bushy, has white 
i flowers, which continue in succession from .Tune to 
September. It is also a fit subject for pot cultivation 
for a greenhouse, according to the account given of it 
J by a botanist (Hewitt 0. Watson, Esq.), who has lately 
I described the plants of the Azores. The seeds for pot 
1 culture should be sown about April, and for bedding 
j out not till July, and to be put into the beds the May 
! following. Campanulas are certainly very good things 
when well managed, and I hope this new addition to 
them will turn out what is said of it. Seeds of Cam¬ 
panulas, Lobelias, Calceolarias, Portulaccas, and of a 
great number of soft-wooded plants like them; and of 
Rhododendrons, Heaths, Epacrises, and others among 
the firm-wooded tribes, to give them all the chances of 
good gardening, ought to be sown differently from the 
more bulky kinds of seeds, and as we are now entered 
on the safest period of the spring to begin the sowing of 
seeds generally, a word in season may help on our 
young beginners, as well as remind the more experienced, 
that attention to small things should not be lost sight of. 
' In the first place, it is a common error to suppose 
that particular kinds of earths, or composts, are essential 
for particular kinds of seeds. “ What kind of soil should 
I use for sowing such and such seeds in? ” is a common 
question; yet few gardeners use more than two kinds 
for sowing all kinds of seeds in; peat, reduced more or 
less, for the seeds of American or peat-earth plants, as 
the Rhododendrons, and there is not a seed in the cata¬ 
logues which will not come \q:> as freely in peat and sand 
as in any other compost, and do as well afterwards; but 
the small seeds of American plants must have peat; 
they will not do well in the poorest and most reduced 
loams under pot and frame management. All other 
seeds, be they small or large, will vegetate and do well 
iu very light sandy loam, and if the loam is sandy 
naturally it is better for small seeds tlmn the best mixture 
of loam and sand any of us make; therefore, for all 
flower-garden seeds I would choose light sandy soil, or 
make it light by adding sand to it. “But how much 
sand to a given quantity of soil or loam ? ” for ]• always ! 
use the two words as having the same meaning. No 
gardener can tell unless he sees the loam; all depends 
on the quantity of sand already in the soil; all that 
experience can suggest is that it is safer to have too 
much sand than too little of it. 
To begin with the smallest class of seeds: part of this 
sandy loam must be sifted very fine, and if an inch of 
this fine soil is under the seeds it will be quite enough, 
indeed much better than if the pot or pan was filled with 
it; any common coarse soil will do to fill the rest of the 
pot with over a good drainage; and all pots, pans, or 
boxes for sowing these seeds in ought to be nearly full, 
as if but half an inch of empty space is left for watering 
the young brood, and an inexperienced hand is allowed 
to water, the pot is sure to get too much water, and 
perhaps a fine promising crop is destroyed in the seed- 
leaf, therefore it is the safest plan to have the seed-pot 
nearly full, and to be well watered before the small seeds 
are sown; well watering means that every particle of 
the soil should receive some. If very small seeds were 
first sown and then watered in this way, the very thin 
covering over them would be disturbed, and perhaps 
the seeds themselves be washed to one side of the pot, 
and when they vegetated be so thick together as no one 
could handle them, and if one of them damped whole 
patches of them would get moulded before the next 
morning. 
To guard against this damping off it is best to sow the 
small seeds thinly. If the seed-pots are watered an hour 
before the seeds are sown, all the better; then take the 
seed with the forefinger and thumb and sow it very 
gently, keeping the eye on the surface of the pot all the 
time to see that the seeds are properly distributed; there 
are other ways, but this is the safest of them all for 
young beginners. It is a good plan to put down the 
seeds gently so as to bed them in the moist surface; 
this can be done with the bottom of a small pot that is 
clean, and not too dry nor too wet, as in either case the 
seeds would be apt to stick to the bottom. In nursery 
and large gardens where the sower has much to do, he 
