August 22. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
39.3 
Take Salvia fulgent next, and say that those plants of 
it in pots must be put into the Salvia bed in June, 
j because the bedding-plants do not cover the bed so soon 
I as was expected—you are loth to part with your pet 
! Salvias, because you intended them to come in late in 
the autumn, in-doors, when flowers are scarce; but first 
come, first served, is the rule for the flower-garden. You 
may go to bed yourself, for the autumn and winter too, 
| and remain there to the end of the chapter, sooner than 
I that Salvia bed should look thin and stingy at such a 
season ; but plunge the middle-sized pots over the rim ; 
dung the other Salvias, and keep your eye on them for a 
while, to see they do not want for water; by-and-by, the 
roots rise, and get over the rims of the pots, and your 
plants are out of danger, and out of harm’s way, till the 
bed plants increase so much, by the end of August, that 
you can remove your pot-plants, and welcome. Now, if 
you have full-sized pots ready to shift them as soon as 
j they are taken out of the bed, you will preserve the top 
roots, which are the most useful at all times, in this 
; family, and in most plants, and you have better plants 
for late flowering than you could get up with all your 
care without plunging. 
Thus, I have shewn the use and abuse of plunging 
over the rim in one genus of plants; at all events, I 
mean, and I put much stress on it, that all who have to 
do with plants and plunging, should not only see the 
difference, but take heed to it, and never forget the use 
and difference in plunging pot-plants for the rest of 
their lives. 
There is nothing in the world more useful to pot- 
plants than to be plunged during the growing season; 
but some plants will not stand being plunged over the 
rim of the pot, owing to the time and manner of their 
flowering. I have had hundreds of kinds of Cactus 
plants plunged in cold, dry tan, during the summer, 
and one summer after another, and they seemed to like 
the plan as well as most plants. I have seen Pine¬ 
apples ripened perfectly without bottom-heat, but I never 
knew any one who succeeded in getting fine fruit of them, 
without plunging the pots, except Mr. Knight, of Down- 
ton Castle, and lie kept up such a heat and moisture, 
where lie fruited his Pines on stages, as would stifle 
most people. I once had a hot bath with him in that 
house, while he was explaining the philosophy of the 
thing, and no man ever knew the art of explaining a 
tiling better than he did—you forgot if it was hot or cold 
the moment he began his lecture. No, there is not a 
plant on the face of the earth, if it is in a pot, but likes 
to be plunged for a certain time every year. Those 
beautiful stove plants which they bring to the shows, 
the Rondeletias, the Dipladenias, and Relates, and many 
more of them, are plunged down to the rim in strong 
bottom-heat for three months in the spring, and I could 
name a Rondeletia speciosa which used to bo brought to 
exhibitions only once in two years, the other year it was 
kept plunged, from February to the end of August, in 
very strong bottom-heat, and the flowers were pinched 
off as fast as they came. 
From not knowing the proper rule for plunging, a 
certain man lost his Chrysanthemum flowers one year, 
and the bloom of his Roses the year following, and he 
made such an outcry against this way of plunging, that 
half the world ran away with the idea that it was a 
very dangerous thing, except, perhaps, under the eye of 
scientific gardeners, to whom nothing seemed to come 
amiss; hut, having taken the subject in hand, I must 
cry out louder than he, till I convince all whom it may 
concern, that there is no process in the art of managing 
plants half so useful as this plunging, provided it is 
done at the right time, and in the right way, according 
to the habit and requirements of the different plants so 
treated. I have even a rule to guide the most inex¬ 
perienced of all our readers, when any doubts rise 
about this or that way of plunging a plant, and that 
rule is simply this ;—if you have any doubts about how 
a plant ought to be plunged, put the pot no lower than 
that you can see the rim of it all round ; you will then 
be sate, and you will learn, some time or other, if it 
would be better for the plant that the pot should be 
entirely covered over the top or not. Practice is the 
only sure guide in all such cases, and practice allows, or 
rather insists on it, that all pots or plants in pots that are 
used in the flower-garden and about the dressed ground, 
should be plunged over the rim, so that a stranger would 
not know they were there. It is an eye-sore to see the 
rim ot a pot above the earth anywhere in a flower- 
garden, or even in a garden-basket, although many 
persons never think of hiding the pots in a basket of 
gay flowers, and so run themselves out of flowers much 
faster than they can get other pot-flowers to take their 
places. 
At this point of my story, I am myself ready for 
plunging into the depth of my last communication, 
where I wrote about getting layers of Verbenas into 
small pots, for making stove-plants to get early cuttings 
from in the spring; after that is secured, I have a very 
different plan in my head, which I know will answer 
exceedingly well, and might be made a feature of great 
interest in most gardens. It is, to have permanent 
plants of I erbenas, Petunias, Fuchsias, and Calceolarias, 
aud as many other kinds of like nature as one can 
manage to find store-room for in winter. I have seen 
Calceolaria viscosissirna nine feet high, against a wall in 
the Botanic Garden, at Birmingham, many years since, 
and if it had been in a pot it might have been there to 
this day, by taking it in-doors for the winter, and turning 
it out against the wall in the spring. The pot to be 
plunged over the rim, the top roots which escaped over 
the pot to be cut away in October, and a great deal of 
the summer growth of the plant to he cut or pruned off 
at the same time; this would balance the head to the 
number of roots left, and make the plant manageable 
tor tying the different shoots close together, for the 
accommodation of stowing away the plant for the winter. 
A Calceolaria, four or five feet wide aud ten feet high, 
against a wall, or wooden fence, aud furnished with 
leaves and flowers to the ground, would be worth a little 
extra pains and trouble. Last year, I think, I mentioned 
a Fuchsia coralina, in the conservatory at Bank Grove, 
near Kingston, which was trained over the rafters full 
thirty feet. Then, say if this, or any other Fuchsia, 
was flat trained for a wall, so much across, and such 
and such heights, would it not be a splendid object to 
look at all the season ? It might be pruned, roots and 
branches, like the Calceolaria, in October or November, 
and left without a leaf all the winter, when it would live 
in a cow-house, if nothing better was at hand. Such a 
plant might be tied to a ten-feet-pole in the middle of the 
garden, and be allowed to branch out on all sides, just 
like the pillar Roses at Bank Grove. I had the Shrub- 
land Ruse Petunia, for several years in succession, about 
seven feet high and three feet across, against a low 
terrace wall, aud I never knew one single plant, and 
of so common a kind, cause so much admiration. It 
was the first and last plant in the garden which visitors 
never tired of admiring and talking about. If that 
plant was kept in a No. 10 or 12-pot, plunged, taken 
up, and pruned, root and branch, after the manner 
of the Calceolaria, it would be a young plant at this 
moment ten feet high, probably, with a main stem as 
ripe and as hard as my pen-holder, so that nobody 
knows how long it might last. 
Look, again, at the Shrubland Scarlet Geraniums, from 
ten to fourteen feet high, in the Bishop of London’s 
garden, and say if there is anything like them in all our 
gardens. The fact is, we go on, from year to year, in the 
self-same circle, like the exhibitors at the Great Metro- 
