October 7 . 
THE COTTAGE GAllDENER. 
7 
tliroe parts tlowai to zero, and a lot of gardeners sliding ' 
oil llio ice-clad lako, or carrying a cabbage on a long ; 
jiolo, looking over the hall, the castlo, or the mansion, 
decorated in this pseudo stylo, and you have anything 
' but a iiicturo true to nature or to art. 
1 Although the Vucc.as have been cut down to the ' 
' ground by some of our severest winters, they are yet 
1 sufliciently hardy to bo allowable, in clligies, as accom¬ 
paniments to architecture, without outraging our ideas 
of means to an end; at any rate, they aro highly ajipro- 
priato for planting in corners, angles, or other s])aro 
places in regularly laid-out gardens, as any ono may 
now see, looking at the new plantation of Yuccas in the 
American garden of the Horticultural Society ol' r.ondon. 
I There is not such another batch of Yuccas in the three 
j kingdoms—that is, so lit for planting as ornaments to a 
1 llovver-gardeu. 
' People far oil' in the country, who knew the old 
arrangement of Ibis garden, will recollect a large mass 
j of Yuccas which stood, for half an age, not far from the 
j great and celebrated Objeine, where a short piece of wall 
projected from the long conservatory wall on which the 
Glycine is trained. All this is now altered : the cross 
wall is taken down, and the Yuccas are removed; so 
that the whole of the conservatory wall, from the cloak¬ 
room to near the council-room, can bo seen at ono 
glance—an immense improvement. Some of the Yuccas 
look as old as if they were the very plant from which 
Adam took his needle, and some of them had I know 
not how many heads. Hut now, in their new bed, they 
are all single-headed, and look as young and thrifty as 
Mr. Errington’s pines which he struck from his best 
suckers last March, and much after the same style of 
growth, without any visible sign of a stem to any of 
them. Many of them promise to flower next year, and 
that in a manner as far superior to the usual run of 
Yuccas, as tho present state of pine-growing is from 
what it was when Mr. Errington first went into Cheshire; 
and it is in this very stylo that they will soon bo seen 
ill our best tlower-gardons all over tho country. Hut it 
is sad news to us who are poor, and are members of this 
Society, to learn that they will not bo able to supply us 
with a single Yucca from our own garden, at least, for 
! the ne.xt four years, for this reason, that the whole stock 
has been divided to tho last head and sucker for the 
new plantation, and that the young plants aro in such a 
vigorous state of health, that ono can hardly look for 
a sucker from any of them before tho time specified. 
We must all trudge to the nurseries ; meantime, 1 shall 
keep on hammering at the subject until every plant of 
Yucca, in every nursery in the kingdom, is made the 
most of, like those in the Society’s garden; and who 
will venture to say there is nothing now under the sun 
when I describe the perfectly new way by which tho old 
Yuccas in this collection have been renewed to tho age 
of mere suckers ? 
The more usual way of increasing this family is from 
suckers which rise from the roots, and from divisions of 
tho head that aro branchy ; these are slipped off in the 
spring, and some of the lower leaves being removed, 
and a few days allowed for the wounds to dry, the 
suckers arc cither planted out in the open ground, in 
some light soil, where they will root during tho summer, 
or they are potted in a light compost, and then plunged 
in bottom-heat, where they will root much sooner. Hut 
when neither suckers nor side branches are produced. 
Miller, the only author on whom I can lay my hands, 
who has recommended the plan, directs the head to be 
cut oil', taking a portion of the old stem with it, ])otting 
this, and a))plying bottom-heat to it, when it will soon 
root; “ and this cutting oil' the heads will occasion the 
1 stems to put out suckers, which they seldom do without 
until they tlower; so that by this method the plants 
may bo obtained in plenty.” This is the method which 
Mr. Gordon adopted with the tops of all his old plants, 
after divesting them of all side branches. Suckers and 
olfsets he formed into ono lot, and all tho tops into 
another, taking olf tong ])icces of the old, dry stems 
along with single heads; but, instead of nursery rows, 
and potting for hotbeds, he removed tho whole at once 
to his new plantation, and ]dantcd them in as novel a 
way as his success is complete. Indeed, I never saw 
.anything answer better ; formerly he recommended a 
hole for them, a foot deep and two feet across, to be , 
filled with a good compost; then to plant a sucker, or a , 
well-established plant in tho middle, and to ]iress the 
soil firmly round tho stem ; on this occasion, howevtu’, , 
ho tried a now experiment. After opening tho holes, he ! 
made a com])OSt of half clay and h.alf cow-dung, and 
stuck in his plants so that tho bottom leaves wero just 
within the surface, and then he rammed the compost 
round tho stems as hard as if he was laying tho founda¬ 
tion for a pyramid; and if the plant was at all top- 
heavy, he put a stone on tho top to steady it still firmer. 
The cow-dung kept tho clay I'rom drying too hard for the 
new roots to work through, while tho clay was yet firmer 
than any loam could bo for steadying tho plants; and 
as soon as roots wero made, there was a rich feast for 
them to begin with, and tho plants now show that they j 
took advantage of it. j 
1 have often seen young pine-apple jdants healthy | 
enough to gladden tho heart of any old g.ardener, but 1 
never saw ])lants more bcaltby, or better-looking in their 
way, than those Yuccas. 
And now, for Tiii'; Cottage Gardener: just look 
round and see if you have a starving Yucca anywhere 
about the garden, with a crooked stem as hard and dry 
as a M ay-]iole, and if it has ever llowered, the chances ai'e 
that it has more than one division in the head; all the 
better; every division of the head will make a now plant. 
You must now trace where the head divides, and strip oH' 
the leaves below that j)oint; then it will be easy enough 
to slip off every division but the one which seems the 
most central, this must lie left to go with eighteen inches 
or more of the hard crooked stem to form your premier 
plant. Never think, for a moment, of taking up tho 
roots, and of transplanting the whole as it is, for that 
would spoil tho whole experiment ; j'ou cannot force 
blood through dry bones, or sap from tbe old roots up 
througb a stem as dry as a cork; but get young llesby 
roots from the very bottom of tho leaves, and as far 
down the piece of stem as they like to come, tbe saj) will 
How vigorously, and tbe leaves will soon be as green as 
leeks, and as still' as pokers; and if you jilant them as 
above, and arrange them so as to be in pairs, no matter 
how far apart, there arc no plants that will more stam]) 
the character of a terrace g.ardcn, the front of a box 
terrace, or, indeed, any geometric figure. 
At the end of ne.xt March will be tho best time for all 
this ; Yucca (jloriosa superha tho best jdant to use—the 
one with the purple back to tho white flowers, and 
Yucca (Iraconis, or recurva, or recun ifolia, or acuminata, 
for it goes under all these names, is the next best. 'J’his 
kind turns back tbe leaves in tho middle, looking as for¬ 
midable as a dragon, which gives meaning to the 
second name; but maoTU! means that kind of turning 
in the leaves. Tho third best kind is Jilamentnsa, and it [ 
has no stem, but it llowers very freely, and is easily ' 
known by tho white threads or filaments which hang j 
from tho edges of tho loaves. There aro many more i 
kinds, they say as many as thirty, but these are enough j 
to begin with in a small way. If T had a long walk j 
with grass on both sides, I would make an avenue of | 
these Yuccas, planting them ten or twelve feet ajiart, 
and six feet from tho walk; a more ambitious man, with ! 
a large stock of plants in the reserve garden, would try 
j to have cvei’y other plant in bloom along both sides at 
1 once, and the other half the year following. H. Heaton. 
