February 5. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
289 
before the plants make a tolerable appearance. This 
(Enothera makes long fleshy roots, with a strong neck, 
or root stock, at the surface of the ground, and it is a 
plant that does not do at all to he divided at the roots, 
like the last, but it may be taken up now and potted, or 
plunged, without pots, in a hotbed, just like a Dahlia 
root, and it will go on giving cuttings till you are tired 
of it, and every cutting will root in about three weeks, if 
they get the same treatment as they give to Dahlia cut¬ 
tings, that is, a brisk bottom heat, but they want no 
close glasses over them if they are in a good hotbed; 
they will root quicker, however, under bell-glasses, and 
are more safe that way in a common propagating-house. 
Plants of it raised this way, as late as the middle of April, 
will be in flower nearly as soon as the old plants that 
were not disturbed ; and, besides being a good bedder, 
this plant is an excellent rock plant, if very young ones 
are turned out from the cutting-pots, and attended to 
properly for the first part of the season. The large 
winged seed-pods are, of themselves, very ornamental 
and interesting among the stones and spas of a nice 
rockerv. 
(Enothera taraxifolia is fully as good for beds as 
macrocarpa, and yet we seldom see it, because it is 
more tender than the other, and people do not ask for it 
at the right season. Nurserymen manage to propagate 
it slowly by dividing the crowns, and, I believe, by cut¬ 
tings from forced plants in the spring, but plants of it, 
thus produced, seldom come to much, except, perhaps, 
in the hands of some of the most careful gardeners. 
The right way to get a good stock of it, and to keep it, 
is by seeds, and by treating the seedlings as biennials, 
and securing them in cold frames over the winter. 
These seeds should be sown before the end of February, 
otherwise the half of them never come up, nor will they 
come up well in heat above that of a greenhouse or 
close cold frame. The best way to get seeds to ripen, is 
by planting one or two of the strongest plants out 
under a south wall, in May, and removing the flowers 
very gently as soon as they begin to decay, or even to 
close, because they hinder the office of the great long 
pistil or female organ, and often destroy it altogether 
before the seeds are inoculated with the pollen. This 
plant is well worth enquiriug after, being more suitable 
for small beds than the macrocarpa. 
Some years since, I used to have a beautiful bed of 
another (Enothera , or evening primrose, called speciosa, 
which kept in bloom a long time, but no one seems to 
have it now. I made annual inquiries about it for a 
long time, without being able to get it. About four 
years since, Mr. Appleby’s employers promised to get it 
for me from some one in the country, I think near Man¬ 
chester, who was the only possessor of it at that time, as 
far as they knew. I hope we shall hear more of it from 
some quarter or another, this spring, as it is certainly a 
most desirable plant for the herbaceous border, and 
I should think that, by dividing the roots after the man¬ 
ner of the Campanulas, it would flower in a bed the 
whole season. When I grew it, sixteen years ago, it 
spread all over the ground like couch-grass, and every 
morsel of the roots made a plant. You might chop them 
like parsley, and then sow the fragments like seeds, and 
the least particle made a plant which flowered the 
same season. 
Almost every writer on gardening, myself among the 
rest, makes a point, about this time of the year, to urge 
on all hinds of planting , so as to get it over before the 
end of February, but this year I shall change the tune, 
and not only urge, but give positive advice, to unplant 
forthwith. In a circle of no more than two miles in 
diameter, round my house, there are as many cottage 
gardens, if not more, of the best class, than are to be met 
with in the same space in any other part of the country, 
and they were all made and planted within the last 
twenty years, and I can safely affirm, that more than 
one-half of them have three times more plants in them 
than there is room for; I mean trees and shrubs. 
Where there is one good plant in them it is smothered 
by five indifferent ones, and in a few years more, you 
could compare the whole to nothing else, so justly 
as to the old lean-to greenhouses, with sloping stages, 
filled with a sloping bank of miserable ghosts of 
“ greenhouse plants.” Now if all this is to be seen 
within a few miles of St. Paul’s, what may we expect in 
the provinces ? And now that I see all this, how can I 
have the conscience to keep in the old tract, and say to 
the cottage gardeners, get your planting finished ofl- 
hand forthwith? Talk about introducing fine new 
things for such places as we generally write for, why I 
might as well talk about fairy tales, for there is neither 
place or space in the gardens that I have access to, to 
plant an extra cabbage-plant in. What is really wanted 
is to grub up more than one-half of the common stuffing, 
and re-arrange all the plants that are good for anything, 
making room here and there for novelties, and better 
things out of the old lists. I would not touch a plant, 
however common, if it is used as a necessary screen in a 
boundary; but if I had my way, I would skeletonise 
half the villa gardens round London, and re-model them 
afresh, and this is the best time in the year to set about 
the work. Some day or other, I shall write a chapter 
on the “ rise and progress ” of the cottage gardens, or 
villa gardens, as they used to call them round London, 
and if I do not lash a race of planters, better known by 
the name of “ Speculative Builders,” my name is not 
Donald Beaxon. 
ECONOMICAL GLASS HOUSES—GLASS 
WALLS. 
Whatever may be the ultimate result of the millions 
of gold pouring in upon the world from the diggings in 
California and Australia, it has as yet produced little 
effect in raising the money value of articles; while 
little, if any, of the increase ccmld have found its way to 
the pockets of the gardening public, if we be warranted 
to draw a conclusion from the increasing desire to com¬ 
bine cheapness with utility. True, you will yet meet 
with many of the old school, contending that cheapness 
is just another name for the ugly and the worthless, and 
that whatever is beautiful and serviceable in material 
must be handsomely paid for; hut the preponderating 
numbers are they who assert that cheapness and fitness 
for a defined object can be attained, and constitute, in 
fact, the only conditions in which they can entertain the 
matter at all. 
Both of these parties are equally right according to 
the ideas they entertain of beauty and fitness, lor I have 
yet to learn that the most refined taste can describe 
anything as ugly and mean, the very slightest examina¬ 
tion of which stamps it with seen utility, and fitness lor 
a contemplated object. 
Hence, in these pages, I read, with no common in¬ 
terest, the account of the five-pound greenhouse. Hence, 
with equal interest, will I wait the result ol keeping 
cows, and growing vines, under the same glass rooi; 
feeling almost certain already, that if the glass makes 
not the byre too cold in winter, the vines will not have 
much to incommode them in summer. Hence, too, 
with similar feelings, here and elsewhere have I read 
the plain lucid statements of Mr. Rivers, concerning 
his orchard houses—a step in the right direction in 
these times, and for which, if we are not, we ought to 
be, grateful; as, all things considered, it is about the 
cheapest plan for covering a space with glass that has 
been propounded. And, with mingled feelings, I have 
read statements and advertisements about these hollow 
glass walls, witli a single or double trellis between them; 
