OcTOBETl 25. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
wise injure them, by cracking and letting in the di-y 
winds to them. Another evil is, that when trees thus 
planted sink down gradually, additional soil is placed 
over tho roots to make the surface level, and this is 
equivalent to planting too deep in the first instance, 
and deep planting is always to he avoided. There¬ 
fore the loose or new soil beneath the roots ought to 
be gently pressed down, and the pit filled up to near 
the surface of the ground, or say to within three or 
four inches of it, so that, when the tree or bush is 
planted, the surface of the pit will appear a little 
mound, several inches above the surrounding surface. 
Some good planters make mounds much higher to 
allow for settling, but I prefer pressing the bottom 
soil in the first instance. One might say of this, why 
loosen it at all if you press it down again? The rea¬ 
son is to have a perfect drainage under the roots, and 
to encourage the strongest of them to run deep in tho 
ground, which will give the plant greater vigour. 
We plant fruit-trees shallow and on hard bottoms, to 
prevent them gettingtoo luxuriant; but in gardening 
for ornamental plants, the more healthy and vigorous 
we can grow them the more ornamental they will be; 
unless, indeed, they are rather tender for our climate, 
in that case shallow planting on a solid or unloosed 
bottom suits them best, as they cannot grow so strong, 
and will therefore ripen better. All this being under¬ 
stood and settled, let us plant a moderate sized bush 
to begin with—say a Portugal laurel, for instance; it 
has been well taken up, has some long bare roots 
and a host of small fibres, with a considerable ball of 
soil attached close up to the bole or botttom of the 
plant; this ball we place in the middle of the pre¬ 
pared pit, and we find that the ball is so thick that 
those strong roots cannot lie down level on the sur¬ 
face, but “ ride,” or hang loose some inches above it. 
What is to be done with them? hook them down to 
the surface, or lower the bottom of the hole ? No, that 
would be bad planting again. We must fill iu the 
loose soil under them, that they may lie in their 
natural position, and in doing that the small fibres 
are pressed down too much, perhaps; if so loosen 
them back again, and fill in any cavities under tho 
bole or main roots. We shall now suppose that tho 
whole under-surface of the ball is resting on the soil, 
and also all the roots, great and small, and each of 
them branching out in straight lines, or as regular 
as they can be placed. Some of the lower ones will 
be out of sight, but the majority are still in view. If 
we had a little better soil from a compost, this would 
be the proper time to throw it over the roots; not at 
random, however, for fear of displacing the fibres. 
You must do it thus: take a spadeful, and throw it 
past the stem of the plant on the roots on the oppo¬ 
site side to you, so that the soil runs along in the 
same direction as the roots. If you throw it on tho 
roots next to you, it will run against their direction 
and turn back their small points, which would be 
nearly as bad as the old way of shaking the plant up 
and down at this stage. When all the roots are 
covered an inch or two, the watering-pot must come, 
with a large rose to it, and you must water all over 
the surface heartily, even if it is a rainy day. This 
watering is to do the business of the old shaking— 
settle the finer particles of the soil about the roots: 
the rest of the soil, to the depth of four or five inches, 
may be thrown on any how, if the lumps are broken 
small, so that the surface is pretty smooth, and formed 
into a shallow basin to hold the future waterings. A 
stout stake, or stakes, according to the size of tho 
plant, should be driven down before the earth is put 
over tho roots, to tie the plant, as recommonded in a 
41 
I leading article, page 14, which article anticipated 
part of this letter on removing large plants, and is 
in every respect plainer and more to the purpose 
than I could put it. All that occurs to me farther on 
the subject is, that when large bushy evergreens are 
to be removed, their branches must be tied up towards 
the stem by passing a ropo or strong cord round 
them, before commencing tho roots. All this kind of 
garden planting ought to be finished before Christ¬ 
mas—I mean the removing of large specimens; but 
young trees and small bushes are planted by the 
thousand every spring, -with little loss in the hands 
of good planters; but young beginners ought to li nish 
as early as the naturo of the season will allow. When 
you come to a very large Portugal laurel, or a com¬ 
mon laurel, or indeed any very large shrub that has 
overgrown the space allotted to it, and it is so far 
encroaching on other things that it must be removed 
in some shape or other, what is to be done with it if 
it is too big to remove? A plant 50 yards round the 
bottom, is no joke to transplant, and I know one as 
large. Cutting back the longest branches will keep 
it in check for many years—but that is not the point, 
but that this very large plant must either be cut 
down, and grubbed up for the wood yard, or be trans¬ 
planted. 
All gardeners have met with such cases, and no 
doubt disposed of them easily enough; but I have a 
new method of dealing with such as cannot be trans¬ 
planted, which I have adopted here for some time, 
and which promises to bo the best hit I have made 
for many years. It is to cut them down in Novem¬ 
ber, to within a couple of feet of the ground. I have 
tried spring cutting, but it does not answer half so 
well for the purpose. When the stumps begin to 
shoot next April, they are cut close to the ground, 
and soon a host of strong suckers will spring up as 
close together as those of a raspberry bush. After a 
while, when they are strong enough to bear handling, 
you begin to cut out the weak ones, till tho whole 
have room enough to grow away freely, which they 
will now do in earnest, and as straight as fishing-rods 
or gun-barrels. I have seen strong shoots from a, 
common laurel stool of this kind reach up to ten feet 
in one season; and they often attain from six to eight 
feet. Now, what I propose to do with these strong 
suckers is this—to make clean stemmed trees, or 
standards of them. Many attempts have been made 
to obtain fine standards, with clean smooth stems to 
them, of our more common bushes, with various de¬ 
grees of success. The Portugal laurel treated thus 
is a good imitation of the fine standard orange and 
lemon trees of Italy; and the common laurel is not 
much behind it. Any of the varieties of the common 
Phillyrea may thus be made to imitate the narrow- 
leafed myrtle of the south of Europe, while the com¬ 
mon Alaternus might be mistaken, at a few yards’ 
distance, for the broad-leafed myrtle, if reared up on 
a five-feet standard with a close circular head; and 
to imitate the olive as a close-headed standard, take 
an overgrown old privet plant, cut it as above, and 
you will soon have a dozen of them. The pomegra¬ 
nate, and indeed any half-hardy little tree, may thus 
be imitated—the principle is the same with them all; 
but I must soon have a whole chapter on shrubs, 
evergreens, and otherwise, which can be formed into 
fine little standard trees, which would look extremely 
well in gardens of limited extent, as well as those of 
the most extensive. I have seen for this purpose 
whole Portugal laurels stripped of their side branches, 
up to five or six feet high, and tho tops formed into 
circular heads; but tho wounds and scars left on tho 
