40 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
October 17. 
understand bow to make a French nosegay can ever 
plant a vase in a geometric garden with various plants, 
except as mere chance work. 
Although trailers are not used for the vases at the 
Crystal Palace, and although I did not use them at j 
Shrubland Park, I have no fault to find with them, and j 
I like to see them, if they are properly introduced, which J 
is a rare occurrence indeed to see. I never could manage ! 
them to my own mind; and I appeal to any lady of 
cultivated taste, who has visited the Crystal Palace, if j 
the sameness which is produced by the plant vases there j 
is not tiresome to tho last degree. After all, and after 
considering the subject in every point of view, I would 
prefer a different style altogether—a single kind of plant 
to every vase, and three distinct colours in the whole— 
scarlet, yellow, and bright pink. The situation is too 
high for Petunias in vases, else one might get a good 
bright, reddish-purple from them, which would be an 
! improvement. Of Petunias they use only four kinds; 
two reddish-purples, the White Shrubland ,* and the 
i Shrubland Rose. Our friends, who could not hear 
of it last spring, may seo this Petunia at the Crystal 
Palace for years to come. They are rather rich in 
| !'erbenas , dark, and other shades of purple ones, greys, 
pinks, crimsons, and scarlets, but not always the best 
kind of a tint; that will come by-and-by, however. 
Pluto, a large brown, and Lord of the Isles, a small 
brown, are there only dark Calceolarias, i could never 
bear the sight of any small brown or small dark Calceo¬ 
larias in a bed or pot. I would have drowned this Lord 
of the Isles before he reached tho mainland, at any rate. 
Two pairs of circular match neutral beds of very dwarf 
Rhododendrons, Myrtifolia and Wilsonii, and each bed 
about twenty feet in diameter, were as regular, as to 
height and compactness, as a bed of Nemophilla ; these 
are double edged with Calceolaria Integrifolia and the 
variegated Alyssum; but there is an edging of Oaultheria 
procumbens coming on ; these stand on either side of the 
grand central fountain, and I would recommend a parti¬ 
cular notice of them ; the two Rhododendrons could be 
introduced to match Verbena beds, they are so low and 
so regular. 
The shape of the centre division of the terrace-garden 
is nearly a crescent, and the grand centre walk cuts it 
in the middle; in this part, therefore, corresponding 
beds fall in right and left of the grand walk; these beds 
are circular, twenty feet across, and all of them are 
edged with Tom Thumbs, from four to six feet deep, and 
within them are the different bedding-plants,—one kind, 
of course, making tho centre of the large circles; here 
are Salvia patens, Ageratums, different Heliotropes, Petu 
nias, Verbenas, and others; between the circles come a 
row of Araucaria imbricata, line, large plants, which are 
supported by slender twine made of copper-wire; first of 
all a soft loose collar is put round the stem of the tree, a 
yard or so from the ground, and to this collar the wire- 
twine is tied at three equal distances all round, and the 
lower ends are fastened to pegs out of sight in the grass, 
or bed: if the tree is anyways crooked, more collars than 
one are used, and more twine to get the tree on the per¬ 
pendicular ; this is by far the best way of fastening any 
treo or standard, and we recommended it in one of our 
early columns for standard Roses and the like. 
There are straight edgings of Heaths to Rhododendron 
and Azalea-beds in several parts of the ground worth 
imitating; they are as regular in outline as so much 
dwarf Box ; the early spring-flowering Heath, Herbacea, 
is one of them, and it must be inconceivably gay next 
spring when in full bloom: to keep it so neat it ought 
to be fresh transplanted every other year. Two varieties 
of Fragrans, Alba and Rubra, are the other Heaths; hut 
Stricta would answer better, and Vulgaris aurea would 
* The White Shrubland Petunia is here called Royal White ; pro¬ 
bably they had it from the Royal Gardens, Kew. 
be rich, in or out of bloom; while Tetralix rubra would 
vie with Herbacea. in prim habit. The four varieties of 
Cinerea would carry the bell all through August, if not 
later. Let us hope that this system of edging American 
beds will come into universal use at once. 
D. Beaton. 
(To be continued .) 
FESTOONING, AND OTHER TRAINING 
STRONG-GROWING GREENHOUSE CLIMBERS. 
1 have seen masses and festoons of Clematis and 
Honeysuckle by the wayside, so thoroughly lovely in 
their wild, playful arrangement, that our greatest art in 
cultivating and training could hardly hope to imitate 
them in beauty and gracefulness. The Canary plant 
(Tropaeolum canariense), is a deserved favourite with all 
classes; enriching the lady’s arbour, and enlivening the 
porch of the working man’s door; but in all the posi¬ 
tions in which I have ever seen it carefully nursed and 
trained, in whatever form that training might be directed 
to assume, I have never, in all the circumstances in 
which I have noticed it so carefully tended, beheld 
it evince anything of the gracefulness which it gene¬ 
rally exhibits when it sows itself and grows 1 untended, 
clambering and spreading over some contiguous shrub 
or low tree, and hence massing, and suspending, in all 
directions, its many shoots, covered with its many 
golden blossoms. I have, generally, almost every 
season, had one or more large Rose trees getting all 
the worse for wear, and it so happens, that this annual 
has been allowed to take quiet possession of the head, 
and in such and other suitable places, I have never 
been able to produce an effect, with cultivation and 
care, equal to what the plant will do when just let 
alone, after, perhaps, a few primary ties and twists in 
the way of first teachings. Another thing I have long 
noticed in this plant, and worthy of a passing allusion, 
is, that tho less you interfere with it, the less it is liable 
to those mildewings and sudden goings off with which 
it often troubles its admirers who cannot be persuaded 
to let well alone. 
Recognising, to the full extent, that art and design 
should over be seen in gardening; that, in fact, however 
wild, romantic, and tangled a scene may be made by 
the genius of man, that yet there is something either 
imperfect, or altogether superfluous and nugatory in his 
workmanship—if it should at once be taken for a 
natural scene, and no impress of man’s doings were per¬ 
ceptible—yet it cannot be doubted, that in many cases, | 
such as those with which I have headed this article, 
it would really be worthy of trying whether we might 
not wholly conceal art and design, but so keep it in the 
background, that the first impression would conjure up 
something like a proof of the old adage, that “Nature, | 
when unadorned, is adorned the most.” 
Mpcli of the interest that would otherwise be asso¬ 
ciated with various coloured Passion-flowers, Tacsonias, j 
&c., in a moderately-lofty greenhouse, is next to lost, \ 
from tlie.trim, artistic manner in which they are fastened 
to wire and rafter, and flowers presenting themselves 
there at times merely on the points of the shoots. Just 
allow a fact which has long been patent to me—that, I 
of all Passion-flowers, from the glories of a Quadran - ; 
gularis, to the less gorgeous beauties of a C'eerulea, the 
real flowers of creation can never see, examine, or 
handle too much of them; and then compare, for a 
moment, the neat trimness of a house where every 
creeper is next to kept to its rafter, during the hot days 
of summer and autumn,—contrasted with the delightful 
coolness and shade in such a house where the flowering 
shoots are allowed to dangle at will, and the still more , 
