THE COTTAGE GARDENER, AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S COMPANION.— May 20, 1856. 
i which will grow from this cutting will bloom next year; if 
I not, we know not how to advise.] 
TREATMENT OF SEEDLING ROSES. 
“ The first day of this year I placed in a large pot about 
a table-spoonful of Perpetual Rose seeds, which I sent to a 
friend’s hothouse; in February about thirty vegetated, and 
when the seedlings were half-an-inch high, 1 had the pot re¬ 
moved to an adjoining house, without artificial heat. They 
have progressed very favourably, are fourinches high, and well 
leaved. Some gardeners tell me to turn them out-of-doors; 
, others differ. I have thought of breaking the pot (by that 
means, the roots will be less liable to injury in separating 
them), and planting them out separately, the latter part of 
this month, into small pots.—E. W.” 
[The question turns upon the fact, whether you are a 
good gardener or not; and from your saying that “ to break 
I the pot the roots will be less liable to injury separating 
; them,” we are quite sure your friends who advised you to 
turn them out of-doors spoke in earnest, and in considera¬ 
tion of your practical knowledge; but the end of May will 
be time enough to turn them out—we do not mean to turn 
I them out of house and home, but out of the pot, into good 
I garden mould in a good warm place. Turn the ball out 
| entire, and let the Roses fight it out for room till next Oc¬ 
tober or March. If so long as March, the rest of the seeds 
| will vegetate by that time, and the Roses from the later- 
seeds will be worth four times the value of those upstarts 
which come up without care and trouble. The best things 
are never got without painstaking.] 
WHAT ORCHARD-HOUSES ARE. 
How much of the history of fruit-culture in this country 
is just that of a battle with difficulties. In addition to the 
numerous enemies furnished by earth and air, we have to 
contend with a climate proverbially capricious, which in a 
single night or day will blast the prospects of the year. 
What wailings do we hear in spring time over blighted 
blossoms! The gardening periodicals groan under the 
burthen of disastrous tales; and the vision of Peaches, and 
other good tilings, inspired by the opening beauties of the 
season, have melted away before the power of the destroyer. 
And thus we have laboured in vain; and all this plan ting 
and pruning, nailing and tyeing, with its expense and its 
bother, its blue noses and benumbed fingers, have been done 
and endured for nothing ! Were ever hapless people in such 
a plight as gardeners ! 
Surely, we must look upon the man as a benefactor who 
invented garden walls ; they afford some shelter, atleast,and 
help to box out Boreas. Then brick is found to be superior 
j to stone as conferring additional benefits, and the lucky idea 
is seized of heating a wall by fire. What a bold navigator 
he must have been who adventured so far into the magnum 
1 mare of discovery as to imagine, purpose, and execute, too, a 
house to grow fruit in! A house for trees ! A strange- 
looking idea this, once as unlikely to some minds as a 
! house for whales ; but a fact very common, and well appre¬ 
ciated, and multiform now. We have garden walls, hot 
and cold; pits and peacli-houses, and vineries, and ilues, 
and hot-water, and hot air, all devices of the gardening craft 
for battling with our difficulties and beating them; and in 
virtue of these devices we have some sorts of fruit better 
than we should otherwise obtain them, and some which we 
should not be able to obtain in any other way. 
Each of all these appliances has a distinct value, but not 
the same value ; and we do not quarrel with a wall because it 
is not a vinery. Is not an Orchard-house a useful invention ? 
| Is it not one of those contrivances which comes to our aid 
in this great battle with gardening difficulties? No matter 
J where the idea comes from, is it not to be made welcome ? 
j Are we to quarrel with an Orchard-house because it is not 
j what is called a reach-house ? orbecause we fancy, or believe, 
j the latter kind of structure so much superior ? Are we to 
| turn the humble Orchard-house out of court almost without 
a hearing ? Do not let us be in a hurry to do this. The 
' Orchard-house is one of our friends, after all. Like other 
13D 
gardening appliances, it has its value, and will occupy, by- 
and-by, more room and receive more favour than it has | 
yet got. 
The state of the question is not Orchard-house versus j 
Peach-house, or any other house, at present; but Orchard- | 
house versus cold weather. Nor is it to be estimated by the i 
mere marketable value of its produce. It appears certain 
enough, that in such a structure, Peaches, Nectarines, Apri¬ 
cots, Plums, Ac., may be produced of good, eatable qualities, 
and that with proper management we may almost always 
calculate on success; at all events, we have certain chances I 
of success; and we may welcome even chances amidst the 
uncertainties of our climate. To use a common phrase, 
anybody may have an Orchard-house, but only some people 
can afford to have what is commonly called a Peach house. 
Gardeners on a small scale may not have a hot wall; but in 
an Orchard-house, of most unpretending appearance, they 
may taste what a hot wall does not always afford. A small 
I space on which the sun shines, and a small expense, a 
i corner in a court, old windows and old boards, and we can 
have an Orchard-house. The idea helps to put the peasant 
on a level with the peer, and the inmate of the town with 
the dweller in the country. Is not this a triumph for gar- 
j dening, and something for mankind—a fresh and enlarged 
I distribution of the bounties of Providence amongst men ? 
I Would it not be a new pleasure for the townsman, on return¬ 
ing from the shop or the office, or before he sets out for his 
daily business, to have a peep at his tree, or trees, as the 
case may be ; to gaze on the opening beauties of the Peach 
blossom, and watch the expanding promise of the year, and 
gather fruit of his own cultivation ? Would any fruit bought 
in Covent Garden be to him like his fruit? Or would a duke 
be so happy over his dessert ? Such things are not fancies ; 
they are capable of being realised. There are thousands of 
places in mighty London, and plenty about all our towns, 
where the Orchard-house could exist and thrive, which 
furnish no other means of fruit-culture. There are courts 
lumbered with old boxes and barrels; back greens not always 
on the shaded side of dwellings; spaces dignified with the 
name of gardens, of the dimensions of a moderate-sized 
carpet, which are capable of giving a home to an Orchard- 
house. And why should not a Cockney possess such a 
1 house if he can find a corner to put it in ? Why should this 
be thought more absurd than the possession of a blackbird 
or a canary ? 
Amidst the confinement of town-life, so little natural to 
man, there is a constant hankering alter nature. It is up 
in the attic, and amongst the chimney-tops. What is that 
we see outside of yon miserable window? It is a Wall¬ 
flower in an old blacking-bottle. And I see not why the 
human heart should not find solace in an Orchard-house. 
This gardener's friend, then, will be content with very 
1 humble accommodation; it will take auy place where the 
sun will shine on it, and be satisfied with a plain dress. 
A labourer’s garden, or a back court in a town, it will not 
despise; and a nobleman’s garden it will not disgrace. 
Indeed, it has been brought forward under such a homely 
aspect, that the Peach-house proper, who is a court gentle¬ 
man, fumes as if a beggarly corse were borne between the 
wind and his nobility. The Peach-house says that the 
Orchard-house is the progeny of a “ calves'-house.”* A 
very pretty quarrel this between the pot and the tea-kettle ! 
What was the great ancestor of all the fruit-houses in 
existence? Was it an old window stuck over a bit of a tree 
against a wall, or two or three such things; or a lean-to, 
with bull’s-eye panes for cheapness? Whether one or other, 
or anything like either (and it must have been), the Peach 
house is descended from it; and it is the parent of a 
numerous and highly respectable family, which numbers ; 
amongst its members the conservatory at Chatsworth, the 
Crystal Palace, and the People’s Palace at Sydenham. 
We need not disown our ancestors, nor despise our 
teachers. An Orchard-house is first a Beecli hedge ; it fins 
only three sides, and no roof. It is a cold affair this, and a 
glass roof is added. Still too cold, however, and four walls 
are given to it, which, instead of being Beech hedges, are 
wooden deals clinkered. Well, this does better; and then \ 
comes a span-roof, which does better still, for it lets in light 
from two sides instead of one. These are steps, and to 
* See page 182 of Vol. XV. of Cottage Gabde.xeb. 
