48 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 23. 
divide the old roots of the best at home. If this work is 
put off' till the spring, the flowers will not be one-lialf so 
tine next year. To show them off to the best advantage 
they ought to have a good back-ground of evergreens, 
and be grown in strong, deep, rich ground. They 
should never lose their bottom leaves till the flowers are 
over, for if they do, though the flowers be ever so gay, 
the plants will be little better than ghosts. It is a 
general custom now to sow hollyhock seeds of the very 
best sorts as they are ripe, get up seedlings before 
winter, plant them out in the spring in close rows, and 
they will flower the same season, and nearly as soon as 
the old plants. This is a great saving of time and 
room; the bad ones are pulled up as soon as they open 
the first few flowers, and the really good ones are cut 
down to make cuttings, early in the autumn; and by the 
time the old way would “give the proof,” this new way 
will have them in the market by the score. The next 
call in hollyhocks will be to get dwarf sorts, not more 
than a yard, or four feet at the most, and until such 
j dwarfs do appear, the next best step is to manage some 
of the tall ones so as to dwarf them, and this can be 
done to a considerable extent by breaking oil'the strong 
flowering shoot when it is about a foot high, early in 
summer, then a host of secondary ones come from the 
stump, and if they are too close together some must be 
removed. D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Housing Plants, Preparations for, &c. —Notwith¬ 
standing the cheapness of glass, want of house-room is 
the prevailing cry go where you will. Plants in bal¬ 
conies and flower-beds, beautiful even now, in this fine 
weather, conjure up feelings of regret, mingled with the 
pleasure they convey, from the conviction that the frost 
will soon seize them as his prize, and that, with respect 
to many of them, we must look on with folded arms, 
without the power or the means of saving them. A 
happier destiny awaits the regular occupants of the 
greenhouse and window, though here, also, the conten¬ 
tions for precedence—the ta^e-me-and-Ziape-me cry, that 
keeps ringing in the ears of the anxious enthusiast as he 
reviews his floral regiments, each and every of which he 
would enlist for another season if he could—prevent it 
being such an easy matter, after all, to carry out the 
advice so easily written, “ House all greenhouse plants 
without delay.” Besides, how often, in literally carrying 
out this advice, are we forced to sacrifice present pleasure 
in order to realise a future hoped enjoyment; need we 
wonder, then, that excuses almost without number are 
made for delay, and that the ingenious man falls upon 
many schemes for keeping the winter residents of the 
greenhouse as long out of it as possible. If I do not 
sympathise with dangerous delays, I do so most heartily 
with all means that can be taken to render these delays 
safe, and thus prolong present pleasure. Of course I 
allude not to greenhouses that are green and beautiful 
only in winter and spring, but a barren desolation in 
summer, as they still are to be met with, in places not 
only small but large. The only advantage that can be 
realised from such a practice is, the security for having 
such houses perfectly clean (if they are not made into 
lumber rooms in summer), an advantage which is far from 
compensating the contrast exhibited between them and 
the loveliness and grandeur around them. Few of our 
readers, I presume, are in danger of erring in this respect. 
The engrossing question with them is, “ how to make 
such small houses as attractive as possible,” at every 
season, and in every day of the year; and, therefore, 
as soon, nay, before the usual occupants were moved to 
snug quarters in summer, means, almost countless, were 
in operation to render the greenhouse as attractive as 
though somewhat distinct from the external scenery. 
If this had not been done, if the houses were empty, I 
would have recommended all the usual occupants to be 
housed by the 1st of October, and all the air possible 
given them, unless when very rainy or very cold. But 
where there are still lingering beauties we are sorry to 
part with, and we can contrive means of partial pro¬ 
tection, I would not house the hardier things until 
towards the end of the month, as they will require more 
air than will suit some of the temporary favorites now 
in bloom. For instance, many of the hardier stove 
plants are the best of all for ornamenting the greenhouse, 
and even the window in summer and autumn. Whether 
The Cottage Gardener had anything to do with it, 
or not, one great favourite of ours, the Qesnera zebrina, 
has been seen by us rather frequently this autumn in 
small greenhouses and windows, almost as fine as ever 
I witnessed it in a plant stove ; and in some instances, 
at least, the only coaxing it received or required, was 
placing the roots, in April, under a hand-light in the 
corner of a small greenhouse. Indeed, I should not be 
greatly surprised to find nice little plants of this beau¬ 
tiful velvet-leaved flower, which the ladies admire so 
much, as common in our windows as the dahlia is in 
our gardens. Now in a greenhouse, with no great 
quantity of air, and in this warm weather, this plant, 
both in leaf and flower, will just be in its beauty; but 
the throwing open the whole of the sashes, so as to suit 
Heaths and Epacrises, would soon cause the leaves to 
curl, and the flower-buds to stop expanding. Then 
there is the Salvia splendens, which some time ago I 
heartily praised, which will stand in a very low tem¬ 
perature, provided actual frost does not reach it, and 
which now, if struck early, will be in full bloom; but 
that bloom will drop prematurely, and you will only 
have the scarlet calyx to look at, instead of the long- 
tubed corolla, if the plant is exposed to a very breezy 
atmosphere at this season and later. The only thing 
that can be done to preserve such plants in their full 
beauty for some time longer, and at the same time to per¬ 
mit housing hardier plants which require plenty of air, is 
to keep them at one end by themselves, and give no air 
there whatever. Here, again, is a lover of Fuchsias, 
that from starting and potting late, and rich top-dressing 
in September, has now a most beautiful show of healthy 
blooming plants, and it does seem hard to tell him that 
out they must come to make way for his Azaleas, 
Camellias, &c., that will not yield him a flower for 
months to come; and yet, unless he can manage to 
keep them secure, out his fuchsias must come, or the 
others may be permanently injured. And there, again, 
is another case that often meets our own observation. 
A house where creepers make a conspicuous figure, and 
the shade of which, when allowed to stream about some¬ 
what naturally, just suits the rather tender summer 
residents below them, and doing away with all necessity 
for canvass blinds. The dull, warm weather, after a 
bright summer, enables them to bloom just now more 
profusely than ever, and it does seem hard to insert the 
knife, and sweep away hundreds of shoots, clothed for 
yards with expanded and opening flowers, and yet it 
must be done, and immediately too, to admit light, 
unless we have other conveniences for sheltering the 
plants a few weeks more. If not, the only thing is to 
make a compromise, and clear a portion, and take in the 
tenderest first. And which are these ? 
Geraniums, if of the florist kinds, and good sorts, 
should be housed early. If exposed alternately to wet 
and cold in the open air, the disease called the spot is 
almost sure to seize them, and a whole season may be 
spent before, by care and attention, you can manage to 
get rid of it. 
Next, all fine hair-rooted plants should be attended to, 
