498 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
March 30. 
as this, is impossible; and I wish now to draw attention 
to the “ Cloches” of our French neighbours, and to 
point to a step in advance,—one, at least, illustrative of j 
the business in hand,—made by the Messrs. Pilkington, 1 
of the St Helen’s Glass Works, in Lancashire, at my 
suggestion. Mr. Pilkington, it w’ould appear, holds a 
commercial garden of his own, being fond of carrying 
out gardening matters with a high hand, or connected 
with the glass question : his garden, however, I have 
never seen. Such being the case, it struck me that he 
j was in a position to appreciate the wants of gardeners. 
! I suggested to Mr. Pilkington such arguments as I have 
I used on this occasion, and begged of him to try his 
[ hand at a circular “ Cloche,” or what, when I was young, 
was called a “bell-glass,” in the neighbourhood of 
j London, but to make it with a moveable lid, something 
! like a Sea kale blanching-pot. Mr. Pilkington kindly 
sent me a specimen, which is, most certainly, a good 
thing, and points in the most unmistakable way to the 
possibility of future progress. If these hints should 
i meet that gentleman’s eye, I hope this will induce him 
to renew the race ; and if any one wishes to go a head 
in this matter, I would strongly advise him to put him¬ 
self in communication with this firm, for I am told 
that their works are pre-eminent, both in character 
and extent. 
By the by, speaking of “ Cloches,” or bell-glasses, I 
was reared and spent the first sixteen years of my life 
in the oldest nursery in England, but one or two, and 
we had lumber rooms all bung with spider tapestry, in 
which might be seen scores of these bell-glasses, or 
cloches, of a green, thick glass, full of “ bulls-eyes,” &c. 
They were rarely used, being 9aid to be quite out of 
date long before the year 1810. We lads used to handle 
them very unceremoniously, but it was seldom we could 
| persuade them to break. Before concluding this glass 
question, which 1 have brought forward with the idea 
of putting other heads to work, I may observe, that the 
j metallic hand-glasses (which I before observed were 
made very complete by a country workman) are square, 
and the lids moveable down to the perpendicular 
portion of the glass, where they overlap with a flange. 
In giving air, ventilating, &c., we simply take hold of 
the handle and turn them slightly round, by which 
means an aperture is instantly produced at each 
angle, and this, of course, capable of any amount of 
graduation. Here, then, the heat escapes at a sort of 
half-height level, which will be formed, I think, just 
about the proper point to promote a speedy interchange 
of warm and cold air, or, in other words, air-giving and 
I ventilation combined. 
Messrs. Pilkington’s model Cloche is about fifteen 
inches diameter (but may be had of any size); it has 
; an aperture, in a sort of neck at top, about three inches 
diameter, and a little bell-cap inverted is placed over 
the aperture. The Cloche is circular. 
T Errington. 
FLOWER-GARDENS. 
If “all the world is a stage,” England must represent 
the right part for a flower-garden, whether the plan be 
right or not; and the last half of March, with the early 
part of April, the busiest time for that part of the stage, 
so there is no time now for beating about the bush, 
which, if it is not pruned now, is not worth the time it 
would take to prune it at this busy season; cuttings, 
old plants, scarce plants and new plants, with seeds 
and seedlings, spring bulbs and flowers, and the summer 
crops which follow them, and the mode of succession, 
are the present and most urgent questions, and into 
them let us all dive a't once, without preliminaries. 
Since I left off gardening, I have learned more about 
the great bulk of flower-gardens than most people 
would believe. In large places, the gardeners have left 
off growing many annuals, because they have hothouses, 
and all that, to keep plants over the winter, and they 
find it less trouble to plant a bed or border once for 
all, at bedding-out time, than to fight and strive with 
seeds and slugs through the whole season. Go to the 
seed shops, however, and there you will learn that more 
than half the people grow annuals, and a great number 
of perennial plants, from seeds every year; and that 
the rage for this economy is getting more and more 
into the fashion every year The advertisements about 1 
all sorts of seeds tell the same tale. Now, after all that 
has been said and written about seeds for the last twenty 
years, there is no better plan yet than the old one for 
filling borders', and this is how I learned that part 
thirty years since. We went to the compost-yard and 
sifted four barrow loads of rich light mixture, a part i 
from heaps of loam, leaf-mould, peat, rotten dung, and 
the old rnbbisli-heap; we sifted very fine; then one man 
went before—a kind of officer in high trot; he fixed on 
the places where seeds should be sown, and with a 
light spade he made a hole in every such place, and 
spread the soil from the hole among the plants already 
in the border with great care ; the holes might be from 
six to nine inches wide, and not more than four to six 
inches deep, along the walk and the centre of the border, 
but the back row of holes were deeper. I followed him 
with the barrowful of sifted compost, and filled up 
every hole he made; and the master came behind us 
with a whole basketful of seed-packets, bags, and papers, 
and lots of little sticks to mark the places or patches 
| where he sowed the different seeds. I had the worst 
part; for if I stepped on a flower, or made a mess on 
the border, I stood between two fires. Some seeds he 
sowed in a ring round the patch, and others he put in 
broadcast over the whole surface, then put a little stick 
in the middle, and with his finger made a circle outside 
the patch to mark how far the seeds went; heavy seed, 
as Lupins, Sun-flowers, Sweet Peas, and such like, he ; 
would bury nearly an inch deep, but the smaller seeds 
he put in very lightly indeed; and he had a sign pflt to 
some of these, which his foreman understood to mean 
that a flower-pot was to be turned over on that patch, 
or those patches so marked, and the pots were put on 
the next day. 
The empty pot over a patch of seeds has a good deal 
of meaning in it; seeds of Lobelias or Calceolarias are 
perfectly safe under a pot; the rain will not splash 
them about, the sun will not burn, or dry up the surface 
and cause them to fail, or be long in coming; cold 
winds, ditto; and the heat of the sun against the pot 
keeps the air warm under it day and night; the damp 
from below cannot pass, and the place is therefore moist 
enough for seeds without watering. As soon as the 
j seeds are up the pot is tilted on the side the sun shines to 
j give air and light; it is let down again at night if it is ; 
j cold, but as soon as the seedlings are beyond danger 
the pots are gathered up in a barrow, and taken away 
for the season. Now, although one would hardly recom¬ 
mend pots to be stuck here or there, in face of the 
windows, the plan is so sure and good, that it may be 
very useful to some who have no glass, or better means 
than the open air to raise some valued seeds. Anybody 
mayi-get up seedlings after the middle of April of such 
delicate things as the small blue Lobelias, the Portulac- 
cas, and the Mesembryanthemvm tricolor, Salpiglossis, 
Petunias, Calceolarias, and even Rhododendrons, and 
other American plants, by the use of pots put over the 
patches just in the same way, and although they would 
be lhuch later than if they were in a hothed, they will be 
all the safer, and make more hardy plants, which would 
grow with less trouble. 
