I 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
41 
0 ctobe n 20. 
need to be cut right close, to make room for another lot 
for flowering the following year. Now, with the ex¬ 
ception of the montana, and without mentioning one- 
half of the bed plants and climbers, that was exactly 
the way the “ Diamond bed,” at Shrubland Park, was 
managed for nine or ten years in succession ; and every 
one who saw it admired it. 
No doubt, before all the improvements are brought 
to a close there, there will he an improved diamond-bed 
in some corner or another. It is a sort of bod that 
must have a place for itself, as it does not suit or har¬ 
monise with every day beds. At all events, I trust this 
account of it will keep it from going out of fashion, or 
rather bring tent-beds and diamond-beds into repute. 
If a good-sized tent-bed was made on grass, planted 
with Punch , or very old large plants of Tom Thumb, 
with an edging of the Frosted Silver-plant all round, 
and the climbers with white flowers, such as white 
Maurandyas, or white Convolvulus, and the white Cle- 
j matis, or Virgin’s Bower,—what virgin, or Empress, 
could desire a more comfortable bed, in troublesome 
times like these, when nothing else goes up or down 
but tales and rumours of war. 
I saw a large patch of a kind of Cat-mint ( Ncpeta 
teuerioides) in the new dell ground at Shrubland Park, 
1 with which [ was particularly pleased as a rock plant, 
a mass plant in wilderness grounds, or as a neutral bed 
in a first-rate flower-garden, as I have since seen it 
used with good effect, and as a bed in which to plant 
standards of gayer plants, after the manner lately 
described by Mr. Fish; for all such uses, this plant, 
though neither new or gay in itself, is very well suited ; 
iudeed, it is a native of dry places in the south of 
Europe, and as hardy as common Thyme, and not 
unlike some variegated Thyme at a distance. It is, i 
also, a bee-flower of the first order, reminding one of 
school-boy days, when we all ran after the first bee of 
the season, in full chorus of “ I C U, 0 U BOB ” 
(I see you, 0 you busy bee). I have seen some excel¬ 
lent examples of the kinds of beds planted with 
standards and specimen plants to rise above the general j 
height of some other plants with which the bed was 
made up, and I think the effect was heightened when , 
the low plants were of a neutral character; but that 
may be a prejudice—I never studied the subject much. 
The Cassia corymbosa, mentioned by Mr. Fish, was the 
last plant I tried against the conservatory wall, at Shrub- I 
land Park, where I found it, the other day, in full bloom. 1 
By-the-by, Tacsonia manicata, which 1 grafted, or rather [ 
inarched, on molissima, against this wall, flowered last j 
season. This is the very finest flower of all the half- j 
hardy climbers; it only requires just the frost to be kept | 
from it to get enormous head-room to spend itself in 
' growth ; then a sudden check by root-pruning, about the 
; middle of May; and in the autumn it would be in full 
bloom, with dark crimson flowers, which no one, except 
a botanist, could tell from a real Passion flower, there 
I being scarcely a semblance of a tube, as in some other j 
species of this doubtful genus. This plant was ouly six ! 
inches high in May I860, when it was inarched into an | 
old plant of molissima, and in the following November, | 
there were several flower buds on it, but it was too late 
for them then to open; and there were no signs of any ! 
blossoms this autumn, the old plant being obliged to be 
confined to a smaller space than it ought to be allowed, j 
Tacsonia pinnatistipula is also inarehed on the same ; 
plant, and not nearly so full in bloom as molissima itself, j 
which proves it to be the first flowering of the genus out- | 
of-doors; for it is only in the winter that this wall is 
covered with glass. The Cloth of Gold Rose and the 
Sofrano do not appear to flower well on this wall; while 
here, about Kingston, both of them do very well indeed 
in most places. The best specimen-plant for a mixed 
bed, that I saw on the border of this wall, was Pentste- 
mon cordifolius in full hloom. There is a fine new scarlet 
Pentstemon, called baccarulifolia, in Mr. Jackson’s 
nursery here, which, I believe, was introduced by the 
Horticultural Society, and they told me it was a fine 
thing. 
I saw several patches of the best of all blue flowers 
for a moderate bed, the Chinese Larkspur— Delphinium 
sinense. Half the world believe this to be a biennial, 
or little better than an annual; but it is as much of a 
perennial as Salvia patens; as good a blue, and lasts as 
long in flower, the plant seldom rising more than 
eighteen inches high; just the right thing for a nice blue 
bed, as we have no other blue of any account of that 
size. Salvia chavucdrinides is too straggling, and the 
bloom not striking; while Cineraria ametloides, looks 
too old-fashioned, or common, for a first-rate blue bedder; 
in short, we have nothing that way half so good as this 
Delphinium. One could buy a good large packet of seeds 
of it in London for sixpence, and out of that several 
first-rate plants could be picked out. the first season; 
then, by saving the roots of these just as we do those of 
the Salvia patens, and getting them to seed the following 
summer, three-fourths of the seedlings would be as 
prime as the parents; otherwise, this Larkspur runs 
away into as many varieties as the common branching 
Larkspur, and shop seeds seldom produce more than 
from five to ten per cent, of really good blue flowers. 
There is no flower we are more often asked about than 
a good blue flower for a bed, and here is the very fellow. 
I had much more to say about Verbenas in my last 
article on Shrubland Park, but I have seen more of them 
since, and now I am gathering a long story about them 
for a particular friend, and 1 shall tell the story in my 
own way shortly. 
I could go on with this kind of gossip for ever so long, 
but too much gossip is as bad as too much of a good 
thing, and I shall cut it after a word or two about 
Standard Geraniums, or rather pillar Geraniums. Those 
who recollect that I said that Queen Victoria fancy 
Geraniums could be grown to five feet high in about 
eighteen months, and shook their heads at the assertion, 
may now, without shaking their faith, believe me, when 
1 state that pillars, or standards, which were made in 
1847, 1848, and 1849, are now as healthy, and produce 
as many flowers, as any of the “ squat” plants, as Mr. 
Marnock once called the florists’ mode of training them. 
Besides the comfort of such a proof, this is just the right 
time to begin to make a pillar Geranium of any kind, to 
be from three to five feet high next June, according to 
hind ; or a Fuchsia, pillar, to be from five to fifteen feet 
high, next ih\\y, according to sort; and a bush of the 
beautiful Indigofera decora, to be a foot or a yard 
through next May, according to present size. All that 
is required for any of these things is a resolution to 
begin the job. When an Englishman begins anything, 
he is sure to succeed with it in the long run. An Irish¬ 
man would run the shoes off his feet ere he would give 
up a race ; and a Scot would try again and again until 
he did do it. Place young, promising Geraniums, with 
only one leader a-piece, in a stove, and treat them just 
as stove-plants till they show for bloom; 80° of steady 
bottom-heat would greatly assist them. 
D. Beaton. 
PITS AND SMALL HOUSES, VERSUS LARGE 
ONES. 
(Continued from page !).) 
Several remarks have reached me, in reference to 
the last article, that may as well be alluded to before 
going further. 
1st. “ If it be of importance, in the case of pits 
and houses, to admit air near the base line, how is 
