January 20. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
317 
after that to taka in The Cottage Gardener, to see 
and learn how to manage the new freeholds; so they 
did; and after draining, trenching, and cropping, on the 
true Erringtoniau system, the new freeholders began to 
lay siege to these pages for advice about flowers, climbers, 
pigs and poultry, about ewes and lambs, Swedish tur¬ 
nips, bees and pigeons, till, at last, these freeholds were 
as full as nuts. After all this we—the staff and standard 
of tho onward progress—thought it -would be all plain 
sailing with us—no more new dodges to think, or write, 
about; but no, we were then threatened with civil war 
and open rebellion—first come, first served—fair play 
loudly called for by the fairest portion of creation and 
English law, ditto by good judges. I want—and I 
want—and everybody wanted, just, everything except 
what everybody else wanted not; and, indeed, there 
were so many interests “ wanted” in our pages and in 
our camp, that we had to diplomise as cautiously as if 
we' had been one of “ the Four Powers.” Yet, after get¬ 
ting over the “ crisis,” here we are again as deep in the 
mud as ever by the doings of the “ Encumbered Estates 
Commission” in Ireland. Hear what our correspondent, 
Garrig Gathol, says, all the way from Dublin. “ Wo 
have just taken possession of an old place, to which 
there was appended, ‘ once on a time,’ very fine gardens; 
at present, there remain fine garden walls and the skele¬ 
ton of once a grand conservatory and vineries. I look 
forward to a busy and pleasurable spring, hoping to 
profit by Mr. Errington’s excellent advice in restoring 
an old (in this case, ruined) garden to some order before 
many months have elapsed. It would serve and gratify 
me, and probably many others, if be, or some other of 
your corps equally capable, would take in hand ‘ The 
renovation of old shrubberies,’ with a list of those good 
hardy aua half-hardy shrubs introduced within the last 
ten or fifteen years; ” and so forth. 
Whatever may become of Ireland, one thing is certain 
of the Irish themselves, they excel all the nations of the 
earth, when they appeal to the best feelings of our com¬ 
mon nature, be they in love, law, or logic, and my young 
Cedar of Lebanon must stand over, without thriving, 
for another week or two, as a proof of the assertion to 
begin with. 
Now, for the sake of Old Ireland and all that is Irish, 
let me entreat of Garrig Gathol not to cut down a tree 
or shrub in this “ old place ” until he lias well con¬ 
sidered all the pros and the cons, inside, outside, and 
all around it. Nothing is easier than to pull down trees; 
any blockhead can do that. There is a story about a 
chopping-block, which stood years in the bade kitchen 
of an old Irish mansion, which sprouted at last, and 
was transplanted, and formed a fine tree after all; but 
all the blocks chopped upon in Ireland for the last 
year or two, or for the next half dozen, may not be so 
excitable, and anyone who will try the experiment, 
by cutting down trees and setting their blocks or 
bottoms for chopping on, without well considering 
what they are about, ought to have their own heads— 
no matter where. 
If I took possession of an old place in Ireland, or 
elsewhere, the first thing I would do would be to put 
the kitchen-garden, the vineries, and conservatory, with 
all the offices, in good, thorough repair. Also the 
carriage-road, and other roads necessary for more private 
use. In doing that, I might find that a better line for 
any such roads might be taken; that, again, might 
involve some fresh planting in different places; at 
least, I would settle all that, and get a plan drawn out 
of all the main improvements before I would fix on 
what alterations I would make in the old shrubberies 
and pleasure grounds, as, no doubt, many of the trees 
and shrubs requiro to be thinned out, and if they, or 
any of them, could be transplanted, that would be better 
than cutting them down. Good planters could remove 
voiy large trees and shrubs if they were nroperly pre¬ 
pared, say by cutting round their roots at three feet 
Irom the stems, all round, this next spring, so as to be 
ready to move next October. We might gain fifteen or 
twenty years by this way of going to work, besides 
having the newly transplanted things more in character 
with the rest of tho place. 
After that, I would fix on all the best specimens that 
could be left in their present position, and put them in 
proper trim by the knife, saw, or hook, but instead of 
looting up all those that were interfering with the best 
specimens, I would first consider whether any or most 
ot these could come in useful lor me before my improve¬ 
ments were finished, and if they wmuld, I should be 
loth to destroy them, and it is always time enough to 
throw away things when we are sure we do not want 
them. Still, I would not allow very common things to 
interfere any longer with better things; I would cut 
them down to tho ground at once, and I would dig the 
ground about as deep as possible, or even trench it, and 
in doing so there would be a good opportunity for 
cutting-in the roots of the cut-down plants, as you would 
those of herbaceous plants in a mixed border. Very 
old Lilacs, Syringas, Guelder Roses, Privets, Laurels, 
and a hundred more such, could thus be renewed in one 
season, so as to make a respectable appearance, and to 
bo ten years in advance of similar kinds brought in from 
j the nurseries, and they would easily remove and come 
i useful somewhere else, after one or two season’s 
! growth -where they now stand. There is hardly an old 
! shrub in the country, evergreen or otherwise, which 
might not be improved, in some way or other, so as to 
I be of as much interest, or even novelty, as any of the 
more recent introductions. 
Bear in mind what I have said, long since, about 
making standards and half-standards of Laurels, both 
! common and Portugal, Privets, Alaternus, Phyllerias, 
frweet Bay, as well as of every one of our common 
shrubs, and there never was a better opportunity for 
making them than when an old shrubbery is to bo 
thinned or condemned. Every old shrub that is cut 
j down to the surface of the ground, be it worn out ever 
i so much, will throw up one or more strong shoots the 
first season, and if you confine the growth to the 
strongest shoot, there is a standard for you at once, if 
you help it on by summer pruning; and then, if you 
; only remove suckers from it when you come to trans- 
| plant it into fresh soil, you have, perchance, the work 
| of six or ten years all ready in one season, and spare 
you no end of money, besides setting you up with such 
j plants as are thought, now-a-days, very fashionable. A 
few years since, I made a nice standard of an old stool 
of the Fly or French Honeysuckle on this plan, and I 
recollect that a duke’s gardener, and one from a noble 
lords place, both were puzzled the same week, to know 
what it could be; and others thought it to be the 
Weigelia rosea, because it stood in one of the best situa¬ 
tions about the garden, but no one looked at it, or if they 
did, thought very little of it, all the years it stood stragg¬ 
ling among other shrubs. A standard of the snow-ball 
Guelder Rose is as pretty a plant as the newest from 
California, and an old stool of it, cut down this spring, 
will make a stein as clean as a ramrod, and as tall as 
any man, in oue summer. Many of the common 
Spiraeas make the prettiest little standard plants you 
ever saw, and so with all the rest of the very oldest 
shrubs; and I can tell, from my own experience, that 
great people, now-a-days, think a great deal of this style 
of plants, but we are not tied to standards for all that; 
and if we like bush plants better, the old shrubbery will 
furnish them as fresh and much stronger than the 
purse, if we mind what we are about. At all events, I 
do not advise any one to cast oft' old plants merely 
for being old, and only requiring a little management 
