November 1. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
61 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
Standard Evergreen and other Shrubs. —Tn con¬ 
tinuation of the subject about making standards out of 
old laurel bushes and other shrubs, I see I did not 
lay stress enough on the importance of having the 
old bushes cut before Christmas, and rather in No¬ 
vember, if convenient. The second season after I 
began these experiments I was sadly put out, and lost 
a whole season, as well as a dozen tine Portugal lau¬ 
rels, by cutting them down to the ground in April, 
which is a good time for general pruning them, and, 
as I then thought, a good time to cut them close to 
the ground also; but it is not so. It is true the 
stools will shoot out profusely enough, but not so vi¬ 
gorously as to form clean stems the first year, with¬ 
out a constant pruning-in of the side branches 
through the growing season, and even then they would 
look knotty for a long time. Whereas, by cutting 
them late in the autumn, strong succulent shoots 
will rise as straight as ramrods, and as smooth as a 
gun-barrel. I was also thwarted about the time of 
ringing the bottoms, to facilitate the emission of 
roots. Ringing must be done at, or a little after, 
midsummer; for, if you ring them any time in April 
or May, and cover the cut parts, a communication is 
soon formed by a new layer of bark. It was on a 
large stool of the lilac, with thirteen strong suckers, 
and another of the common privet, with nine suckers, 
that I first discovered that spring ringing has little 
influence in arresting the circulation, and I was ra¬ 
ther surprised at the fact; but so it was, and, as the 
whole went through my own hands, I could not be 
mistaken. On referring to such authorities as I then 
could lay my hands on, I discovered nothing relating 
to this early ringing, and as to the theory of the 
practice 1 need not speculate now. 
Standard lilacs, including the Persian lilac, are 
very handsome when you can have them without the 
wilderness of suckers which they are so prone to send 
forth, and they are the easiest of all to make, except 
the snowball bearing Guelder rose, which will make 
the most handsome of standards imaginable, and, in 
good soil, an old plant cut down will throw up 
suckers seven or eight feet high, with hardly a side 
branch. This and the common lilac often throw up 
suckers, without the old plants being cut down, suffi¬ 
ciently long to make these standards, but unless they 
are well disbudded, and rings of bark cut out as 
above, you can never divest them of their natural 
way of producing suckers. The common syringa 
(Philaddphus coronariusj is another deciduous, 
rambling shrub, as prone to give forth suckers as the 
lilac, but, treated as standards, they make beautiful 
little trees, and the troublesome habit of producing a 
host of suckers is got rid of. They make elegant little 
trees, like standard roses, for forcing, in the spring. 
There are two others of this genus which ought to be 
in every shrubbery, whether as standards or huge 
bushes; their names are the Warted and the Broad¬ 
leaved Philadelphus. These throe flower early in 
summer, and there is another species of them that 
does not flower till J uly, and on that account is valu¬ 
able, besides that it is a very handsome shrub ; the 
name is Gordonianus —after Mr. Gordon, one of the 
Horticultural Society’s gardeners, who is the most 
knowing gardener we have among trees and shrubs. 
In their natural way of growing, theso shrubs are 
little better than a raspberry bush; indeed they are 
more troublesome than ornamental that way, but 
train them into standards, and one could hardly be¬ 
lieve how nice they look. 
Amongst other things I had a handsome round¬ 
headed standard of the old-fashioned Fly honeysuckle 
in bloom last May, and two smart young gardeners 
mistook it for the new Weigela rosea, and wondered 
how it had grown so strong during the short time 
since its introduction. Now, of all the weedy things 
in the world, this honeysuckle is the queen or king, 
when allowed to stole and ramble about after its own 
fashion. Therefore, if handsome manageable plants 
can be formed out of such materials, surely it is bet¬ 
ter to have a good selection of them than to have 
one’s grass-plots and shrubberies stuffed with laurels 
and half-a-dozen other common things. 
The common berberry makes a handsome standard, 
but how seldom is it tried that way, being only al¬ 
lowed to make a thicket of scrambling suckers—chok¬ 
ing up the shrubbery like other plants of the same 
habit. Yet when reared up on a clean straight stem, 
five or six feet High, it forms a very interesting little 
tree, and while in fruit particularly so. There is an¬ 
other form of it called the Asiatic berberry, which, if 
possible, is a still more interesting little tree, with 
bunches of purple berries in the autumn. The 
Horticultural Society of London have distributed 
tHis berberry industriously all over the country of 
late years, and they recommend it for underwood in 
plantations, to shelter and feed game, for which use 
it is very well adapted, and no poacher could force 
his way through a thicket of it, for it spreads from 
the roots as much as the common black-thorn. There 
is one more berberry called Aristata, a brittle-leaved 
berberry, which, I think, would answer well as a 
standard, though I have not seen it grown that way. 
The old Gorchorus Japonicus, with double yellow 
flowers, which may be seen in every old garden in the 
country, growing after the manner of the raspberry, 
would make a singularly beautiful standard if the 
stem did not rise above four or five feet high. The 
long slender branches first grow perpendicularly, and 
then bend over gracefully, like plumes of feathers, 
and, when in full blossom, the weight of the flowers 
weigh down the branches till their points nearly 
sweep the ground. There is a variety of this with 
single flowers, which was introduced about a dozen or 
fifteen years since. When Be Candolle saw this 
singlcdprm of our plant, he at once perceived that it 
did not belong to the genus Corchorus, and he named 
it Kerria, after Mr. Ker, a botanist who collected 
plants for the Kcw Gardens; the fashionable name, 
therefore, is Kerria JaponicU. 
The genus Spiraea furnishes a host of plants, which 
produce suckers in such numbers as to destroy each 
other. I never tried them, nor saw them tried by 
others, as low standards, but I am quite satisfied a 
great reformation could be made in their culture by 
getting rid of their suckers, and rearing them on sin¬ 
gle stems from two to five feet high, according to the 
growth. Spireea Lindleyana, treated as a low stand¬ 
ard, would form one of the handsomest plants that 
one could place out on the grass, and when not in 
flower might be mistaken for a new sumach tree. I 
am now rearing a batch of seedlings of it for this pur¬ 
pose ; they were sent to Sir W. Middleton by Lord 
Hardinge from the north of India, along with many 
curious things from that quarter, including a peach 
tree with small narrow leaves, as much like those ol 
a small willow as possible, and if it should turn out 
to bo a good fruit, as I expect it will, it will be some¬ 
thing for my friend, Mr. Errington, to talk about 
some day. 
Speaking of Indian shrubs, where could you find a 
better subject for a handsome standard than the 
! “ Beautiful Lcyccstcria” of Dr. Wallich—a soit- 
