300 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
FfiRRUABY 2G. 
provided. There must be no coddling here ; and, in I 
ihe event of a leuii-lo liouse, with a north light, it would I 
be well, in all probability, to have the south trout of the | 
roof glazed with rough plate glass, and the north light, 
with clear sheet. 
On the whole, thou, I must say, that for the affluent, 
and those prepared to meet whatever difficulties the case 
may jn-eseut, Orcharddiouses, certainly, offer a chance of 
carrying out some of tlie special objects of the fruit 
cultivator, iu a jnost satisfactory way, as to the ijualiiies 
of the dessert. Whilst saying this, however, 1 do not 
wish it to be sup))osed that I would narrow the question 
as to the form of the structure. Those who have, as 
yet, had only one idea about an Orchard-house, had 
better go to Trentham and see what Mr. Fleming has 
done—-he has fairly broken the old trammels. 
I may just observe, before I conclude mj'^ loose re¬ 
marks, that if any person should try to persuade us that , 
tiees may' be profitably kept in pots—holding less than 
a barrowful of soil—for many years; why, then, there 
should, indeed, be a revolution in what is called “ border 
making;” and even my poor platform mode, with its j 
half-dozen barrows of soil, will come to be counted a ^ 
most extravagant procedure. R- Errinqton. i 
Vanda Ccerui.ea in Bengal. —“ Near the village of 
Lernai, Oak woods are passed, in which the Vanda ' 
ccendea grows iu profusion, waving its panicles of azure ! 
flowers in the wund.We collected seven mens’ 1 
loads of this superb plant for the Royal Gardens at ' 
Kew' ; but, owing to unavoidable accidents and diffi- j 
cullies, few specimens reached England alive. A 
gentleman, who sent his gai'dener with us to be shown 
the locality, was more successful: he sent one man’s 
load to England, on commission, and though it arrived 
in a poor state, it sold for ,£300; the individual plants 
fetching prices varying from £3 to £10. Had all 
arrived alive, they would have cleared £1000. An 
a,Clive collector, with the facilities I possessed, might 
easily have cleared from £2000 to £3000 in one season, 
from the sale of Khasia orchids.”— (Hooher's Travels in 
the IJimnlaya.J 
A WEDDING-BREAKFAST. 
No one need wonder that I should be commissioned 
by his Ueverence the Warden of Christ’s College, in Tas¬ 
mania, to send him European trees and shrubs, to 
remind him of early associations; but who will not 
wonder that T should be consulted about tl>e arrange¬ 
ment of flowers for a wedding-breakfast room in liOii- 
don ? Yet so it was, on a recent happy occasion. Your 
humble servant w'as invited first to a conference; and 
at the conference the breakfast-room was mapped, the 
number of guests settled, and the most appropriate 
plants and flowers for that room, on such an occasion, 
together with the ivedding nosegays, the bouquets for 
the table, and tlie kind of dessert, were all fixed and de¬ 
termined on a grand scale. No names, of course, may 1 
mention ; but, a.s these preliminaries must be gone 
through, on some scale or other, on all such occasions, 
there can be no harm in hearing how such things are 
managed occasionally in high life. 
The first thing to be considered, when a room is to 
be decorated with flowers for a jiarticular occasion, is to ; 
glance over the room itself, so as to fi.x on the most pro¬ 
minent ]daccs for the flowers to stand on for the best ! 
eflect, without being, or appearing to be, in the way of j 
anybody. VTiat would be a good arrangement iu one 
room might he altogether out of place in another room; 
so that notliing would be learned from knowing how' , 
this particular room was decorated. j 
The kinds of plants must be selected according to the 
time, or the season of the year, when they are in bloom ; 
Init it is in harmony with the “occasion” that two-thirds 
of the flowers .should be white, and that the rest should 
be from blush to crimson, through all the shades of 
salmon, pink, rose, and scarlet: no yellow or blue 
flowers for a wedding; to say nothing of yellow stock¬ 
ings and blue stockings, blue and yellow arc political 
badges in England, and therefore out of place where 
“ Whigs and Tories all agree,” as they should do, at a 
wedding. 
The beginning of February being the time for this 
wedding, the chief flowers iir season were Camellias and 
Epacrises, which of themselves give all the colours for a 
wedding, and none against it. JJliite Cinerarias and 
nhite Chinese Primroses, single, double, and double 
white-fringed, forced Deutzia gracilis, which the un¬ 
learned mistake for Orange-blossoms in the wedding 
nosegays, and to which the unscrupulous dealer assents 
with “ so be it.” Dielytra spectahilis never looked better 
than at that wedding, nor all the Cyclamens either. The 
Christmas Rose and the crimson llyacinth were in good 
contrast. The blush, single and double Hyacinth, and 
the white varieties of the same, with all the rest iu the 
same style, were placed in half-circular groups on stands 
nearly breast higli, which stands supiported tall looking- 
glasses between the windows along one whole side of 
the room, which was sufficiently large to breakfast filty 
persons, the number to assemble on that morning. 
The pots, or, rather, the half circles of pots, were 
covered with moss, which you can get more green and 
fresh in London than elsewhere. After that, the surface 
of all the moss w'as nearly covered with cut flowers, the 
flow'er-stalks being simpdy stuck in among the moss, 
down to the surface of the stands on which the wliole 
stood. The reflection in the looking-glasses made whole 
circles of flowers, and looked e.xtremely well, giving a more 
I agreeable form, besides doubling, apparently, the number 
I of flowei's. On each of three of these stands (the tliree 
middle ones) were to be placed two gold stands, to hold 
the six bouquets of the bride’s.maids. The bride’s bou¬ 
quet was to be in another gold stand, at the head of the 
break fast-table, in front of the wedding-cake. 
The breakfast-table was iu the form of the letter T, 
I with the corners of the cross table at the top rounded 
off; on this cross table stood the wedding-cake, in the 
centre, in a large silver dish; and on each side of it, 
and half-way between it and the ends, stood two large, 
handsome bouquets, eighteen inches in diameter each, 
in gold stands thirty inches high. A third bouquet, of 
the same size, and on a similar stand, stood on the cen¬ 
tre of the long table ; and a dessert group, also in a gold 
I stand to match, stood on each side of this bouquet, and 
' half-way between it and the ends of the long table. '.L’he 
gold stands for the bouquets were like tlie stand of a 
reading-lamp, but more massive, with a gold basket on 
! the top of the stand. Three ecclesiastics stood at equal 
distances round the plinth of the stand, with their heads 
i nearly touching the bottom of the basket. They w'ere 
thus iu better taste than you often meet with in such 
compositions: the more usual designs make these 
i figures, even if they are heathen gods, no better than 
apple-women in Covent Garden, by placing the golden 
baskets right on their heads. A “milk-maid" in a 
landscape by Landseer, with a milk-pan on her head, 
would be in good keeping; but the idea has been sadly- 
outraged of late years; and Mr. Gunter, who supplied 
those stands and the breakfast, shows better taste. 
A vessel in the form of a paint-pot—the best form of 
all for such a purpose—was used to hold the large bou¬ 
quets in the gold baskets, and the said vessels were hid 
in moss. Table-bouquets are easily made to any size in 
such vessels. Gather your flowers with long stalks; 
make the first or bottom row rest on the edge of the 
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