4 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
April 1. 
miglit say the same about China Asters. They must 
have various names, hut I do not know them sufficiently 
to be able to plant a bed of mixed sorts, unless they 
were in bloom at the time, and I hardly know of whom 
to ask advice, for of all the annuals most people manage 
to make the least effective show with them. But what 
need of further examples, when there is hardly a family 
of bedding plants on which some alteration or improve¬ 
ment might not be made in some way or other. 
I met a gentleman at the meetings of the Horticul¬ 
tural Society, who is, perhaps, the most scientific cross¬ 
breeder we have; from him I took fresh courage, as well | 
as my ideas about the experimental garden. If I were at ! 
liberty to mention his name, I should put him down as 
the most likely person of our times to raise the better 
seedling than the Scarlet Ivy-leaf within the next ten 
years. He has obtained a cross already which baffled me, j 
and many more of us, out and-out—the White Unique \ 
Geranium has seeded with him by the pollen of the old 
Purple Unique, and the seedlings are up, therefore there 
is no doubt about the cross. I set my heart upon that 
cross many years ago. I was the only gardener who 
possessed the White Unique at that time. It was an j 
old kind, which was picked up for me in a cottage win- 1 
dow, and I named it, but kept it in my own hands till I 
made sure that no art of man could force a cross from j 
it. I then sent it to London, to Mr. Henderson, of Pino j 
Apple Place, not as a good bedder, however, but to see 
if some one else would have better luck with it, such 
luck as I suggested for the Slirubland Pet, which is of 
the same strain, yet little suspecting that I should ever 
hear of a son and heir to the Unique dynasty in that 
quarter; but so it is, and if so, why should I not “face 
about,” and get among such impracticables once more 
in earnest, when I have more time to attend to genealo¬ 
gies and descents of all questionable and unquestion- 
, able strains? Hence the origin and progress of the 
j experimental garden. 
CUTTINGS. 
i There are two sizes of all the smaller pots—both below 
2i's—the large 00’s and the small48’s—which are the only j 
two kinds of pots which I recommend to amateurs and all 
newbeginners, for their cuttings; the 18’s for Calceolarias, 
j spring Geraniums, and Verbenas, and the CO’s for all 
others. Then, to make suro work of it, I tell them not to 
' put in more cuttings than one row round the sides, and 
quite close to the pot; but here I overlooked, or, rather, 
1 never knew, a difficulty which was pointed out to me 
the other day, as arising from this mode of inserting the 
cuttings. It is not every oue who can take up, or lay 
down, a full cutting pot like a gardener; and you may 
guess a man’s practice from the way he will handle his 
pots, just as you would know a yeoman of the pantry j 
by the manner he haudles his glasses, or a groom, or a 
tar, from the swing of his gait. An amateur will take 
hold of a full pot invariably by placing his thumb over 
the rim, and in doing that he cannot help crushing any 
cuttings in that spot. Therefore, until lie learns to take ! 
it out of the plunging material by taking hold of it a 
little lower than the rim, between the thumb and middle 
finger of the right hand, then change it to the palm of 
the left oue, we must contrive to save him and the 
cuttings, by leaving a gap in the ring of the cuttings 
sufficient for the size of the thumb—a thumb gap. 
70° is the lowest that the glass should indicate in the 
morning, for the next six weeks; earlier in the season 
00° would do, but time is pressing, the season has been 
most unfavourable nil along for forcing of all kinds— 
hardly any better than November weather to this very day 
(26th March), and much business is to be got through 
| yet in the propagating department. If the air is kept 
I moist, but not so much so as to damp leaves, cuttings will 
] stand enormous heat. I have had them by the thou¬ 
sands up to as near to 90° as I could keep them for the 
whole month of April, and I hold a direct contrary 
opinion to many of the best gardeners on this point; 
but we reason on this point from opposite principles. I 
hold it to be true philosophy, that it is not the amount 
of heat you give to a cutting which weakens the consti¬ 
tution of the future plant, but the length of time which 
you keep it in more heat than is natural to the parent 
plant. 
POTS. 
If any man, with a flower-garden at his back, has 
more pots just now, and more pot room than he knows 
how to fill, depend upon it he will never die of love or 
from a broken heart; thousands make a thousand shifts 
at this season, the best of which is making a bed four 
inches deep, in a cold or half-warm frame or pit, of leaf- 
mould and light sandy earth, and shake out store pots 
of Calceolarias, Verbenas, Geraniums, and plant the con¬ 
tents across the beds in rows, and water them once or 
twice a week; the same with struck cuttings. 
D. Beaton. 
THE ANEMONE. 
Ie a short definition were required of what constitutes 
a florists’ flower, the answer might be—the increase in 
size, the improvement in appearance and form, and 
the multiplication of the floral parts under cultural 
care. Take, for instance, the common Viola tricolor, 
and a large, first-rate Heartsease; or a gaudy, single 
Dahlia of 1820, as contrasted with a first-rate double 
flower of 1855, and the power of the florist is at once 
perceptible. On the score of superiority in beauty alone, 
most people would place what is called the double 
Auemone among the most attractive of florists’ flowers; 
while, I dare say, 1 should not want companions if I 
gave preference, as respects beauty, to fine-coloured, 
well-formed single flowers. Perhaps such a taste may 
be owing to being an admirer of these family harbingers 
of spring, from the A. nemorosa that carpets the open 
glades of the woods, and the violet A.pulsatilla that 
delights on our chalky uplands, to those more showy 
denizens of the parterre and the border, the offspring of 
A.coronaria and pratensis, the latter coming to us from the 
sunny skies of Italy, and the former from the Levant. 
In those eastern countries, so full of the associations of 
the past, so replete with anxieties for the present and the 
future, I have been told that the coronaria, the Poppy 
Auemone, grows as freely on exposed rising grounds as 
the wood Anemone does with us; and an idea was 
sought to be conveyed, that owing to its extreme hardi¬ 
ness, much of the care of the florist might be spared, as 
to taking up, resting, &c. I have never heard, however, 
that these wild flowers equalled in beauty those that 
were the result of the florists’ skill. It would be a back¬ 
ward idea to suppose that art was to bo employed in 
imitating natural productions instead of improving 
them ; while, even in the present instance, it will be 
perceived that skill and the prompting of nature join 
hand in hand ; the culture generally followed being such, 
in our vuriable climate, as would yield conditions to the 
plants similar to what they would have enjoyed in 
climates more regular, where heat and cold, dryness and 
moisture, the “ early and latter rain,” could be some¬ 
what clearly predicated. 
Propagation is effected by dividing the roots, after 
they have been taken up in May and June, for increasing 
old favourite varieties, and by seeds for obtaining new 
kinds; collecting seeds as fast as they ripen from the 
best single and semidouble flowers. For scarce kinds, 
the tuber may be divided into as many pieces as there 
are eyes, or buds; but if much divided, they will bloom 
weak the following year. In handling the roots when 
cleaned and dried, care must be taken not to break 
