94 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 6. 
improving for ten years, and after resting on the oars 
for half that number, here is the second move for a 
similar purpose. Every place of note, and many places 
of which we never heard the names, has now its own 
best seedling Scarlet Geranium, which is hardly known 
out of that neighbourhood. To collect all these into 
one garden, to match each of them with its nearest of 
kin, to note down the merits and the differences of each 
kind, and to report faithfully on the whole, is surely 
worth while putting your shoulders to the wheel, and 
if you do, you will be entitled to put as many questions 
about them, and the progress made in the researches, as 
seem good to you and to your friends. 
The next best known kind, after Turn Thumb , is Frost’s 
Compactum. Mr. Frost, at Dropmore, I believe, was 
the fortunate raiser of this kind, which is so distinct 
from all others as to be known at first sight when in 
flower. Formerly, it would make a true species; but the 
most singular thing about it is, that a second form of it 
has never appeared yet. It had no pollen for some 
years ; but it would seed readily with other pollen ; yet, 
out of many thousand seedlings from it, by the pollen 
of superior seedlings, I never saw a flower from it worth 
marking for a second trial. The nearest to it, which 
I remember to have seen, was one called Gem, which 
was raised by Mr. Ayres, the lucky hero among the 
Fancy Gerauiums, from whom I expect a plant of every 
bedding Geranium within miles of him. Where Gera¬ 
niums are planted in long rows, Compactum has the 
best habit for that style. It is also the best of them to 
follow the architectural lines on a terrace; but it will 
not mix, plant and plant, with any other kind. Putting 
an edging of Flower of the Day round it answers well 
enough, and that is the best edging for Compactum of 
all the edging plants; but that is very different from 
mixing. A compound bed may be made with three, 
four, or moro kinds of Geraniums without mixing them, 
and if Compactum must be in that compound, recollect 
there is but one place for it—the very centre. It would 
never do to plant flat-headed Geraniums in the centre 
of a bed, and then put a row or baud of Compactum 
round them, with other flat kinds in front of it. It is 
the best we have, however, for the centre of a bed, or 
for a single or double row. It does not tell well in a 
very large bed by itself, as you might have noticed at 
the Crystal Palace, and an edging of Verbena round it 
is only killing two plants at one planting. As a pot- 
plant, Compactum is, probably, the best in habit of the 
breed; at least, it is the easiest to make a good speci¬ 
men of, and the one which will live the longest without 
getting out of shape or bare at the bottom. 
Shrubland Scarlet , alias Smith’s Emperor, Amazon, 
Princess Royal, and many other names, is the strongest 
of the race, and has the largest truss of any of them. 
It was the first seedling of them which appeared at 
Shrubland Park, and, like Compactum, there is not 
another just like it; but if you keep it to its own pollen 
the seedlings will show four variations, and only four— 
hence the reason for the various names, so many growers 
having been deceived by their seedlings from it. At 
Shrubland Park all the four varieties are used as one 
kind, one of them having a slight horseshoe mark, one 
with a much thicker leaf, and one with a thinner leaf 
than the original; but for colour, truss, and habit, the 
four arc one, aud cannot be used but as one kind. 
Seedlings of it make by far the best plants for pot 
specimens, as, with ordinary care, the congregation of 
sucker-like shoots, which rise from the bottom of the 
seedling Geraniums the second year, the bottom of the 
plants may be kept well furnished for many years; 
while plants from cuttings of it soon begin to get bare 
and woody at the bottom. The fourteen-feet high plants 
of it, on the lawn at Fulham Palace, were the finest 1 
ever saw of it. The next best were on the conservatory- 
wall in its native garden, and the large beds of it there 
are the only masses of it worth looking at that I have 
heard of. No one else seems to succeed with it in beds. 
The last time I was at Shrubland Park, 1 saw a hedge 
of it at the entrance to the conservatory-terrace a yard 
high, and as full of flower down to the ground as Judy 
in the boxes a little further on. 
Punch is the best of the plain leaves for dry, chalky, 
or gravelly soils, and about the last that should be 
pluced or planted in a rich garden. It rarely makes a 
good pot-plant, owing to the free habit of making too 
many bottom-shoots. Of all the Geraniums, it gives the 
best seedlings by its own pollen. I could always trust 
to ten being nearly true out of a dozen of them, for bed¬ 
ding with the mother plant; and it was from taking 
cuttings indiscrimately from such planted beds that so 
many inferior kinds of Punch got about the country. 
No visitors to the garden, for some years, could be put 
j off from taking cuttings of it, and the nearest hand on 
the ground, and often the youngest hand, was trusted to 
cut from the original kind ; but first come, first cut, was 
generally the rule. Still, Punch will never do on rich 
land. 
Psahnon, which is from the Fothergillii section, is the 
best of them all to keep over the winter; but is hardly 
planted now, except in large gardens. It is among 
Geraniums, however, what the Black Hamburgh is 
( among Grapes; it never fails, be the season or soil 
I “ what it may ;” but its puculiar colour, orange salmon, 
requires a brilliant array of stronger colours all round 
its neighbourhood to bring it out properly. Hence the 
reason why every garden in the kingdom has not just 
as much of it as of Tom Thumb, or one bed, at least. 
Spring cuttings of it will answer better than older plants, 
in nine gardens out of ten. It is not a good pot-plant, 
except as a standard; but it is the best of them all for 
a standard to be planted out on the grass; and after 
the first year or two such standards require no moro 
stakes or staking than a common standard Rose. In 
geometric gardens, and more particularly in terrace 
gardens, such standards in rows, alternating with bush- 
I plants of Geraniums in the same row, look exceedingly 
rich and artistic when well done. It is true, you can¬ 
not have everything in a small place ; but go to one of 
our principal country residences, and see the elaborations 
of details, the new designs almost every season, the 
rows, the rings, the network in flowers, the pyramidal 
flower-beds, the embroidered terrace-pattern, the accom¬ 
paniments to flights of steps, the “ window-sills,” “ the 
corridors,” and the dining-tables, and, say if a pen like 
mine could pourtrny a faint likeness of the scenes before 
you. Still, that is no reason why we should not make 
the attempt occasionally. And you may go over acres 
of most undulating and varied lawns and pleasure- 
grounds in other places, where all the beds and change 
of beds are on the one even flat, style of humdrum plant¬ 
ing and pegging, with not the size of a brick to knock 
your heels against, or to shake the rheumatism out of 
calves wearied to the extreme point by dragging you 
over so much sameness and such “nature assisted’’ 
simplicities, and squat patches of white, scarlet, and 
blue. 
From the first rage for Tulips in Holland, to the last 
design for a cottage garden in England, there is Hot a 
period in the history of extravagant fancies f'nm which 
some practice may not be borrowed, and is actually 
seized on at the present day, to give additional charms 
to the new art on which we are all engaged—the art of 
flower-gardening, which, in England, at least, is the 
youngest of the “ arts,” and owes nothing yet to poetry, 
painting, or landscape-gardening, so called. The whole 
of it has been the production of a few superior intellects 
from among the ladies of our own laud. The lords of 
the creation have had little to do with it, hitherto, save 
