THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
.321 
March 14.1 
to Hartwegii in a circle or row; for we may rest satis¬ 
fied that any combination of plants that will answer 
in a circular bed, will do so equally well on a long 
border alongside of a walk. We have only to use 
those plants which we would place in the centre of a 
circle, as the back row on a border. The old-fashioned 
blue and yellow lupins, called Dutch lupins, are only 
fit for patches in a mixed border, as they are soon 
out of bloom. I had not tried them for years till 
1847, and the mice took more than the half of the 
seeds; which reminds me that all lupin seeds are pa¬ 
latable to the mice, and must be guarded from them. 
Sweet Peas. —One sowing of them is enough this 
month. There should be a few sweet peas in every 
garden, however small, if only for cut flowers: every 
body likes them that way: but they are not very 
manageable as a flower-garden plant, unless used as 
a back row on a border. 
Prince’s Feathers and Love-lies-bleeding.— 
Who would think of growing such common things 
in a fashionable flower-garden ? I do, for one ! The 
centre of four large beds are made up of them hr re 
every season, and the arrangement is such that every 
one who sees them approves of them. These four 
beds are part of an arrangement of beds to suit 
Italian architecture, in their neighbourhood. There 
is one Italian cypress in the centre of each of these 
beds ; round four of these cypresses is a broad ring 
of the Prince’s feathers, say five or six plants deep ; 
their purplish pannicled spikes pushing upright in imi¬ 
tation of the cypress, and thus heightening the effect; 
then, just outside this band is planted or sown, for the 
two will answer to be either sown at once in the bed, 
or be sown anywhere else and transplanted, when 
they are five or six inches high. Love-lies-bleeding 
is about the same height as the Prince’s feathers, when 
they both come into bloom, but the flower-spikes take 
opposite directions; and, if the soil is very rich under 
the Love-lies-bleeding, its flower-spikes will hang down 
20 inches or more; and if the plants are only six 
inches apart in the row, they will make a complete 
hedge, the outside of which is nearly a sheet of pendant 
purple bloom, forming a very strong contrast to the 
feathers and cypress. Now, outside this pendant 
hedge of bloom there should be another band of 
flowers, that grow no taller than just to cover the 
points of the Love-lies-bleeding. I have guessed and 
tried, tried and guessed again, to find out the proper 
width of this outer band, and the nearest point I got 
to is, that the band should be as wide as half the 
height of Love-lies-bleeding, which in very rich soil, in 
which it delights to grow, is generally a yard high, or 
a little more. Now, this may seem a small matter to 
some, but with flower-gardeners there is no question 
at all about the matter; there must be certain pro 
portions in which different plants will look better, and 
heighten the effects produced by them, than any 
other, whether they are planted in one bed, like these 
under review, or in separate beds of each colour, form¬ 
ing a whole mass. But, as a set-off, I may say, from 
having had a large share of this kind of gardening, 
that to plant a flower-garden properly is one of the 
most difficult points in gardening ; indeed, the whole 
range of gardening put together is not half so difficult 
to learn, or to carry out. 
In England we carry out flower-gardening better than 
is done anywhere else, but I never yet saw a flower- 
garden without a fault, and many faults too ; my own 
attempts among the rest. I am quite firm in my 
opinion, that nothing in the whole range of the sci¬ 
ences is more difficult to learn than this branch of 
gardening; therefore, until I learn it properly my¬ 
self, I cannot engage to recommend to any one of our 
readers how best to contrast, or to harmonize, the 
colours of their flower-beds; all I can do is to give 
the colour, the height, and the cultivation of flower- 
garden plants: just as gentlemen do about ladies’ 
dresses—they buy them, but they seldom dictate the 
cut of the fashion, that must be left to the ladies 
themselves; and ladies, in nine cases out of ten, can 
arrange the colours of the flower-beds better than the 
gentlemen and their gardeners. 
Those annuals that will bloom from June to Octo¬ 
ber, and of which 1 said enough last autumn, should 
be sown on a slight hotbed before the end of the 
month : I mean, more particularly, Tagetes tenuifolia, 
Saponaria calabrica, and San vitalia procumbens, and 
either of them, when the bed is once filled, will shew 
what a flower-bed ought to be during a whole season, 
both as to flowers, and the disposition of the plants. 
Portulaca. —There are four or five really beautiful 
kinds of this plant, annuals, and all succulents also ; 
requiring exactly the same treatment as M. tricolor, 
only that two sowings would carry them on all the sea¬ 
son (See p. 308). They are nice for beds, patches on a 
warm border, or for pots. Any time in March, or early 
in May, will do to sow them ; and the best way is to 
buy a packet of “mixed” seeds, from which you get as 
many sorts as if you were to order a packet of each; 
only there is a yellowish one which, perhaps, they 
have not yet put into the mixtures. Their other 
names are P. Thellusonii, P. splendens, P. grandi- 
Jlora, and the yellow one, with two more that are 
only varieties of the first three. Their English 
family name is Purslane, but this word has no 
meaning in it, and is not so easy to mind as Portu¬ 
laca, which, besides being easy to say, is very ex¬ 
pressive. When rendered into English it signifies 
“ the milk-man”—from porto, the Greek name for a 
carrier, and from which our word porter is probably 
derived; and lac, milk, milk-carrier, or milk-man. But 
many other plants as well as these have their juices 
in the form of milk. 
Lobelia Gracilis is a free-growing, blue-flowering 
annual, and very useful in the flower-garden, as it 
lasts till the end of the season and will grow in any 
soil, soon covering the bed ; and when it reaches the 
sides may be cut like a hedge without being stiff¬ 
looking. In good soil it will rise about a foot, and 
will bear topping; that is, the longest points of the 
shoots may be cut off three or four times during the 
i season, so as to have all parts of the bed of equal 
| height. The seeds of all the Lobelias are very small, 
' and ought to be very slightly covered, and the pots 
to be always watered before the seeds are sown; and 
the moment they vegetate the seedlings ought to be 
i exposed to the air, as they are impatient of close 
I confinement. 
Lobelia Erinus. —There are three or four little 
varieties of this ; and all of them spread well, on the 
ground, and are the lowest plants that one can use 
for little beds and for edgings. One of them is called 
grandijiora and another lucida, but as they sport 
considerably there is little use in distinguishing them 
by particular names. I always make choice of the 
best in a bed to save seeds from, and now I have a 
much better sort than any of the named ones. 
There are also two or three white-flowering varieties 
of it, and all of them are very useful to form a gay 
assemblage. 
Lobelia Ramosa. —This is the most beautiful blue¬ 
flowering bedding plant we have got ot its size, which 
is from 12 to 14 inches high. It is of a very slender 
growth, with large blue flowers, having each a white 
