January 8. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
would look well spiring up here and there among the 
round-headed shrubs. 
About the end of January is the best time to trench a 
border for Alstromerias and the spring Gladioli , and 
both ought to have a portion of fresh soil from a com¬ 
mon or hedge-bank. No manure is half so good for 
them as rough fresh soil, with all the dead leaves, roots, 
and rotten herbage, and all this to be packed in the 
bottom of the bed or trench as the work proceeds. I 
know a nurseryman famed for healthy bush plants of 
all descriptions, and he told me the only secret in the 
thing was his using large quantities of top soil from a 
common, hard by, every year at the winter digging, and 
that he preferred it to the best rotten dung, and I be¬ 
lieve he is right; the only objection to this kind of 
dressing is the quantities of wild seeds which we must 
thus take in to increase the weeds next season; but if 
the roots of perennial weeds are picked out, seed weeds 
are easily kept down. 
Every means within one’s reach for enriching the 
Rosary , or rose beds and borders, should be made the 
most of now, when less company, or fewer visitors, are 
expected than at any other time in the year. The 
strongest, most common, and most disagreeable kind of 
manure is, without any doubt, the very best kind for 
producing the finest roses; rich, dark or brown run¬ 
nings from the pig-sty is the next best, and that from 
the stables or cowhouse the third best, and this last is 
better than rotten dung from the farm-yard. In apply¬ 
ing the strongest, the best way is, first to draw aside a 
couple of inches of the top soil round the plants, and 
forming it into a basin; then early in the day, or when 
no one is about, the cesspool, where all house-sewage 
runs, must be reached, and for every gallon of this 
sewage add three or four of pond-water, and let every 
rose in the garden have a couple of gallons of it; the 
soil will fix all the best parts, and the rest will drain 
away, and as soon as the surface is a little dry, level 
back the earth, and in half-an-hour no one can make 
out what you have been doing. The best rose growers 
reckon on three dressings of this kind, all in winter, to 
be equivalent to three or four inches of rotten muck 
spread all over the ground; and on very light soil it 
would not be too much to say that it is as good as six 
inches of muck if the cesspool is of the general run. 
There is no other way to make light soil keep close, and 
at the same time sufficiently porous, as this; you may put 
six inches of clay all over a bed, let the frost crumble it 
down, and work it in when dry next March, but that 
bed will sooner get dry next June than the one with the 
liquid stufl’, after a few applications, and here is a proof. 
I said the other day that the chalk under a rose-bank 
was like an open sieve. A few days back we dug out 
a large hole in this chalk, ten feet deep and eight 
feet in diameter, and when finished, some wise head 
advised to have it bricked all round in cement to hold 
the kind of liquid-manure for which it was made, but 
Mr. Wells, the foreman, who made it for me, said, “ That 
was all stuff;” the thing would soon cement itself, and 
if it did not, it would be time enough to brick in 
cement when he failed; and he was right. In less than 
nine months all the cement in the country would not 
make it more water-tight; but at first, when the drain 
from the main cesspool, which held the house-sewage, 
was led into it, the water escaped as fast as it went in, 
but it soon cemented itself all the way up, as Mr. Wells 
said; and there it is to this day, and will last as long 
as the good stuff runs into it. Now, here is a good 
practical lesson for every one who has a house and 
garden, and this is just the right time of the year to 
learn it, and make the best use of it. Every house 
has, or ought to have, “ another place,” as they say in 
parliament, and instead of clearing it out all at once, 
as did Cromwell and Louis Napoleon with their par¬ 
liaments, draw upon it by degrees, through a long drain, 
and let this drain empty itself in a large hole near 
the rosary, and from the other side of the hole let off , 
another drain for fear the hole should overflow ; unless 
the place is pure sand, you need not fear about the 1 
hole keeping the drainage; indeed, sand itself is no 
obstacle if you can keep the sides from falling in for the , 
first six months, and that might easily be done with j 
rough slabs from the sawpit; but like the proof of the ] 
pudding, I have proved this also, and the tank which ! 
supplies the kitchen-garden at Shrubland Park with 
liquid manure is cut out of pure white sand and nothing 
else, and not a single drop does it lose all the year 
round; but at first we had to slab it all round. Any 
poor labourer now out of work could make a tank of 
this kind in a few days; and no money was ever laid 1 
out to such advantage for any garden. The only diffi¬ 
culty that I can see is the drain from the other place to 
the tank; if it must pass near trees or through the 
shrubbery, it must be laid with pipes having sockets, 
and be cemented at the joints, otherwise the roots will 
be sure to find their way into it, and in time choke it 
up altogether. Then, if one had a choice of situation, 
I would recommend the tank to be made square and 
long, for capacity, and not more than a yard deep, nor 
wider than four feet, then a man could scoop out the 
contents at any time without going into it, and it might 
be covered over with rough wood and earth, leaving | 
only a square hole somewhere near the middle—not at 
the ends or sides, because then they would break down | 
the sides getting out the stuff. 1 am not sure that a j 
tank of this kind would hold the liquids from a stable, 
cowhouse, or farm-yard, because I never tried it, but 1 
think it would after some months; but 1 am quite 
certain that there is not a chance of failure in making 
such a tank in any kind of soil whatever, to hold itself 
brimful from the other place. There was a good deal 
said in some of the early numbers of The Cottage 
Gardener about cheap tanks, but my experience of 
those mentioned above was not sufficient then to war¬ 
rant me to say anything about them, but I had often 
wished to recommend them since, only I forgot them at 
the proper time. 
Rhododendrons , Azaleas, and other American plants, 
are multiplied by the thousand from seed, and this is 
the proper time to look after it, as the pods will soon 
burst when the sun gets a little more strength. This is 
also the best time to sow it in-doors if one had the con¬ 
venience of a little extra heat; the seeds are so small, 
and the seedlings so easily go off in hot or sunny weather, 
that amateurs, and even some good gardeners, seldom j 
make a good hit at rearing them, but at this dull season j 
they are much more easy to manage. I have seen whole j 
boxes of them sown as thick as mustard and cress in a 
little heat in Jamiary, and come up without a gap. As 
soon as the surface looked green with their tiny leaves, 
the boxes were put into a greenhouse, and when the 
sun came out strong, they were shaded in the middle of 
the day with single folds of newspaper, and before the 
end of April they were fit for transplanting. I am of 
opinion, however, that the Evergreen berbery ( Berheris 
fascicularis ) will soon supersede the Rhododendron as 
undergrowth for plantations; as, go into what garden 
or nursery you please, you shall see thousands upon 
thousands of them planted in beds and rows ready for 
“ turning out;” and I wonder the directors of the dif¬ 
ferent railroads do not cover the banks of their lines j 
with it, for it seems to be the very best of all plants 
for the purpose, as it will grow on every variety of soil, j 
and on the steepest bank, either in the full sun, or in 
perfect shade. 
I saw something new to-day with which I was much 
pleased— a new garden wall just finished. The coping 
of the wall is made of slabs of half-inch slate, and pro- ; 
