April 1. THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
shrub, which one seldom sees in gardens, because the 
hard winters often kill it in many places. Graft it now 
on the common May or hawthorn, however, and it will 
stand the frost down to zero on a dry soil. Photinia 
serrulata is another very beautiful shrub, or large bush, 
which every one ought to grow, on account of its fine, 
glossy, large leaves, which come out early in the spring, 
of a fine reddish-purple colour, and the old leaves turn 
purplish in the autumn; like Stransvesia, it is one of the 
Appleworts, and will do much better grafted on a thorn 
or quince, on account of its own roots being too tender 
for our climate. There is another Pliotinia, called dubia, 
a native of Nepaul, where they use it for dying scarlet 
Then there is the Eriobotrya, or Loquat, another 
| Applewort, closely allied to the two last, which is all 
but hardy about London, and quite so in the south-west 
of England. I have had it stand many a hard winter in 
Herefordshire, after grafting it on the common thorn; 
| but I think the quince would make a more natural 
i stock for it. I think the fruit of it is called Japanese 
I quince, and Loquat by the Chinese. At any rate, we 
had a beautiful dish of this fruit exhibited the other day 
in Regent-street, from Mr. Tillery, gardener at the Duke 
of Portland's; but although our teeth watered to be at 
them, we could not taste them, because we had no 
orders, and we are very particular about such fruits as 
are sent this way. Any fruit is quite safe in our hands; 
but, in this instance, I could see very plainly that the 
* lecture about these Loquats set the teeth on edge. As 
Mr. Errington was not there, I must say that Mr. Tillery 
sent an excellent account of how he managed to bring 
this fruit to table, that it is thought a good deal of 
coming-in in succession early in the spring, when other 
fruits are getting scarce. The trees are uncovered in 
the summer, as they might be under Mr. Rivers’s or¬ 
chard-house plan. In September they come into blos¬ 
som ; the glass is put on; the temperature got up to 
stove heat after a while, and kept so through the winter, 
and the result is a fine crop of fruit early in the spring. 
I wish Mr. Tillery had allowed some of the old gar¬ 
deners to have tasted this fruit under his new system. 
I tasted the same kind, under a different management, 
just twenty years ago next May, from Mr Forbes, then 
gardener to the late Earl Powis, at Walcot Hall, in 
Shropshire. I recollect the circumstance more particu¬ 
larly, from having then come very nearly to the end of 
my days by a brute of an Indian cow, with a great 
hump on her back, which ran after me. These Loquats 
look verv much like small apricots; I fruited them 
myself once, but it was on the cold system, as at Walcot, 
and we did not think much of them,—hence my desire 
to taste them now to know the difference, for I can 
easily conceive how the high winter temperature must 
improve the flesh and flavour. On the cold system, I 
can vouch they are not worth growing in England, 
except for curiosity; but in a sheltered part in the 
flower-garden the bush would make an interesting 
group with the Photinia and Stransvesia, and while 
they were young they might be sheltered a little with 
some dry covering. 
I must notice what I never heard of before respecting 
the beautiful Forsythia viridissima, the same plant 
being again exhibited from our own garden at Chiswick; 
and in the lecture about it it was said, that although 
this plant is as hardy as a gooseberry-bush, it ought to 
be planted against a south wall, “ where it would be 
roasted in the summer and well-ripened in the autumn.” 
The flowers come out after that treatment in immense 
quantities in the following spring, and being well shel¬ 
tered by the wall, they make a fine show; but when 
the plant is in the shrubbery, the flowers stand no time, 
being as susceptible of cold winds as those of the ca¬ 
mellia. Let all our cottage gardeners hear this in mind, 
for, old as I am, I thought I was well paid for my 
journey to town by this piece of useful intelligence, and 
the more so, because I have recommended the Forsythia 
to be planted in the open shrubbery more than once in 
these pages; but, somehow or other, these Londoners 
know everything better that we do in the country. 
A great nurseryman once told me that he had fine 
tall standards of the common broom and gorse, or 
furze, grafted on the common laburnum; but the 
object of this paper is to draw attention more to the 
subject of inuring half-hardy plants to our cold climate 
by means of grafting them on hardier stocks of their 
own kinds. There are hundreds of greenhouse shrubs 
that might thus be turned out into the borders during 
the summer, taken up and potted before winter, kept 
half dry for three or four months, and then turned out 
again. After a few years, they would get so hardened, 
that many of them would live out on a dry soil all the 
year round, with a very slight protection. Take the 
genus Acacia for instance, and you might select twenty 
or thirty kinds of them for a spring garden, if they were 
grafted at different heights on one of the “ green wattles” 
of Australia, or Acacia dealbata, the hardiest of them 
all, and one of the fastest growers. On the 2nd of 
March, we had a bough of this wattle in full bloom in 
Regent-street, all the way from Exeter, where the tree 
is quite hardy. 
I had a letter from Suffolk, the other day, from the 
friend who kept his Geraniums among the shavings over 
the winter, with their roots sealed in damp moss. He 
says dryness is the great secret of the matter, and he 
adds, “ but you must never make both ends meet.” Wet 
moss is as essential at one end, as dry air is at the 
other, but that is only what we have all along been 
insisting; dry air, dry covering, of which the best is 
dry pea-sticks put over a bed with dry fern over them, 
so as to let in the dry cold winds, and keep out the dry 
warm sun in early spring. 
When I come to describe the finishing of my new 
cottages, I shall introduce an entirely new way of pre¬ 
serving half-hardy things over the winter, at very little 
cost; I mean, new to the style of cottage gardening. 
But I must now finish my saying about what I saw at 
the last meeting in Regent-street. The first plant which 
took my attention was close to the door; and whether 
it was from the effect of the sudden change of light, 1 
cannot say, but I mistook it for an artificial plant stuck 
all over with starry wax flowers, of the most intense 
reddish-pink colour; it was Boronia triphylla, the best 
of them all, and in the lecture it was said to be as easily 
grown as a Diosma, if so, every one ought to have it, as 
it certainly is the prettiest plant we have from Aus¬ 
tralia. Not far from it was the handsomest plant in 
the whole Chinese flora, Dielytra spectabilis, from Mr. 
Appleby. Mr. Fortune told me, on the spot, he did not 
see a larger specimen of it in China, and the great 
lecturer pointed to it as a charming plant for me to 
write of in The Cottage Gardener. They gave it too 
much heat, or too much confinement, however, which 
made the flowers come paler than is natural to them. 
They all say it is as hardy as a crocus. Mr. Ingram, 
Her Majesty’s chief gardener at Windsor, sent a beau¬ 
tiful Hybrid Epacris from miniata; the flowers were of 
a deep vermillion, the white of the parent being subdued 
altogether; and Mr. Meredith, gardener to the Duke 
of Sutherland, at Clifden, sent a splendid specimen of a 
Hybrid Begonia, between the tall B. manicata and the 
dwarf B. hydrocotylifolia, one of the finest crosses I 
have seen for years. But the lecture on it was too.full 
for my limited space to day. D. Beaton. 
