July 22. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
255 
fleshed, Terry's, Snow's, or our Hybrid Persians, is a 
matter of taste with the grower : all we can say is, that 
the kind of green-flesh exhibited by Mr. Collinson of 
Exeter Hall, (an old, and worthy neighbour of ours,) 
at Chiswick, is, and has been for years of so superior a 
kind as to leave little to desire. All praise, however, 
to Mr. Snow, whose capital kind has surely a very 
close connexion with the Terry’s, the Bromham’s, the 
Collinson’s, &c. R. Errington. 
EXHIBITION AT THE GARDEN OF THE 
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.— July 10th. 
This, the third and last exhibition of the season at 
I the Chiswick Gardens, went oft' triumphantly. The day 
j was fine; the tents were full of plants that could hardly 
be grown better; and, as always happens on a fine day 
in July, if there is any want of freshness or gaiety in the 
flowers, it is more than made up for by ladies’ dresses, 
and here, at any rate, we are not tied down to the same 
things over and over again. If I had to report on this 
part of the exhibition, I should say, without hesitation, 
that the greatest improvement in it could be traced to 
the Belgian lace court in The Crystal Palace. Beyond 
these self-ventilating fabrics, the next greatest improve¬ 
ments were in the contrasts and in the combinations 
of the colours as we desire them in flower-gardens; 
but, indeed, the flowers, except those of many orchids, 
were as fresh as at any of the exhibitions; the Heaths, 
I think, were better than ever, and the Geraniums 
were quite as good as at any of the former shows. 
Stove plants, such as they exhibit, hold out much 
better than the greenhouse ones, and here you would 
see the Allamanclas, the Ixoras, tho Glerodendrons, the 
Tineas, and the Dipladenias, as two to one of green¬ 
house plants, except, perhaps, the Leschenaultias, the 
Polygalas, and the different everlastings, as Phcenocoma 
and Aphelexis. In orchids there were no great novelties, 
and many of the plants looked anything but comfort¬ 
able. The truth is, we had such a sudden and very 
unnatural change in the weather from the Sunday 
before the show, which lasted all the week, that to name 
blankets, counterpanes, or curtains, was enough to in¬ 
duce blisters; and the Orchids, which delight in a damp, 
uniform temperature at this season, were put out of 
their way more than hardier plants, while the Heaths 
shone as if this roasting weather had come on purpose 
to brush them on for the show. Fuchsias, after all, are 
not to be put down by the compass or carpenter’s rule. 
We had here several collections of them, and some grown 
on opposite principles, and the effect of both equally 
good. That is, some were grown, and most beautifully 
too, on old stems or standards, after the manner of 
standard roses, and the heads were trained like so many 
umbrellas; these were exceedingly Wfell-grown, trained, 
and flowered, and their novel shape attracted much 
attention; they belonged, I believe, to Mr. Salter, the 
celebrated introducer of French and other continental 
novelties to his nursery at Hammersmith. Others were 
bloomed from stems of last year’s growth, closely pruned 
j Inst winter or spring; and some from plants either 
| struck last autumn, and kept growing in good heat all 
the winter, or cut down to the surface of the pots at the 
j turn of the new year, or later, and only allowed to make 
| one central stem, from which branches come out regu¬ 
larly, and at regular distances all the way up from the 
pot. Any of these three ways will do equally well for 
different kinds of Fuchsias, for there are some kinds 
which admit of being grown on either plan, and some 
which do much better from autumn cuttings or cut 
down plants. But the Norfolk plan, which I told of 
long ago, suits all the Fuchsias equally well, and is far 
better for conservatory and terrace-garden plants than 
this London way of growing them. Indeed, I never 
saw the very free-growing ones, with soft large leaves, 
in good bloom at any of the shows. Don Gavonii was 
the best representative of wliat I mean at this exhibi¬ 
tion; and although the plant could not possibly be in 
better health, nor the flowers any larger, owing to the 
rage about rapid growing among London exhibitors, 
there was not more than one flower on that plant for 
every hundred that might be, if treated on the Norfolk 
system. 
Now I am most anxious to turn the tide in favour of 
the Fuchsias, because I am quite sure there is not J 
another family of plants in England so useful to ama- ! 
teurs and to country gardeners, and as anybody who } 
can keep a sack of potatoes free from frost all the winter, 
will be able to save his Fuchsias all that time, there is no 
cause why everybody should not grow them, except one, 
and that is, the just prejudice raised against them at 
these very exhibitions, owing to the wrong and unna¬ 
tural way of growing mere forests of shining leaves on 
long loose side branches, with small clusters of flowers 
at the extremities ! Why you might often shoot wood¬ 
cocks through some of the plants without shattering 
a single flower; then people cried out, “What is the 
use of growing new fuchsias; they are no good, they are 
so gauky; or they are such frights?” But a humming¬ 
bird, yea, a house-fly, could not pass through one part 
of any of Mr. Salter’s Fuchsias umbrellas without dis¬ 
placing a leaf or a flower; and if his plants were 
branched from the pot, and ten or twelve feet high, and 
equally proportioned • all round, a man might sit on 
horse-back on the other side of it and you could not see 
him, and the right criterion of a Fuchsia specimen 
might bo this, that— You could not see an elephant 
through the bush! The white Fuchsias on this occasion 
were very rich indeed; there were nine kinds really 
good ones, but the two best, according to my notion, 
were Pearl of England and Madame Sontag; Fair 
Rosamond next; Princess Elizabeth, Purity, Dr. Gross, 
Diadem of Flora (large), and Flavescens, having a pecu¬ 
liar yellow tinge, were among the rest; and one called 
Star might be said to be intermediate between the red 
and the white ones. Don Gavonii is the largest red one 
I ever saw; and the best one for the flower-gardener at 
this exhibition was Voltigeur, because it was the nearest 
in growth or habit to the old Gracilis, the finest hedge- 
plant of the whole family where the soil is suitable. 
This Voltigeur (pronounce it Volteshur) reflexes much, 
and the inside is an intense purplish blue, or bluish 
purple. Now let us make a fresh start with the Fuchsias 
another year. All the globes may be grown as at pre¬ 
sent, from cut down and then spring forcing, or from 
autumn cuttings grown on all the winter; all the rest 
we must try once more to flower from the old wood only, 
and give them no heat until the middle of March, unless 
they break early of their own accord and without help. 
Here we must bear in miud that my Norfolk friend, who 
takes off the first prizes with Fuchsias there, has proved 
that a Fuchsia is never fully up to the mark until the 
flowering shoots come from three-year old wood; there¬ 
fore, a stem that is two years old now, or this autumn, 
will be a fit subject for this experiment next spring. 
This class must be kept rather dry all through the 
month of October, but not quite dry; this will cause 
them to go naturally and gradually to rest for the winter, 
without any hurt from early frost, which Fuchsias often 
have to stand against much to their hurt, when they are 
allowed to make a late growth. In November, the water¬ 
ing is to cease for the season, and before Christmas the 
plants are pruned, but they may be pruned as late as 
the end of January ; and the pruning consists in taking 
off every morsel of the growth made this season, and 
last year’s growth too, except where it is very strong; 
the principle being, that the shoot which is to bloom 
