6 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[April 3. 
memorandum in the garden-book— “ 1851. Flower-beds, 
top spit removed.’’ Then in 1852 you will know what 
you are about. When you begin the flowerbeds you 
will reserve the top spit, and wheel away the second 
spit, and this time you need not dig the beds at all, but 
cast down tbe top spit as the second is cleared off, and 
the fresh layer comes on tbe top as before. Make a 
memorandum of this, and the third season the third or 
bottom part of the bed comes in for its turn to be 
removed; so that, as I have said before, your bed, or at | 
least the greatest part of it, is renewed every three 
years; and thus one may go on for a life time with all 
the chances of success in a flower-garden, and with no 
more trouble or expense than at present with fits and 
starts. 
Our compost-heap for this annual dressing amounts to 
about two hundred and fifty, or say three hundred one- 
horse cart-loads, made up as follows : one hundred loads 
of any rough earth, from banks, ditches, or waste places 
where alterations or improvements are going on about 
the farm or other parts about the park, or on the estate, 
near enough ; this is got in the winter. In the summer 
we burn a large quantity of clay for different purposes, 
and of this fifty loads go to tbe flower-garden heap; all 
the prunings of the shrubberies and the refuse old stalks 
from the garden we char, as Mr. Barnes advises; this 
gives us so many loads; we then gather large quantities 
of leaves, for we never bury one in the shrubberies, but 
dress them with the soil from the flower-beds; all the 
short grass and sweepings from the garden, and all the 
leaves, and stalks, and old plants from the beds in the 
autumn, go to the rubbish-heap ; and last of all, just at 
the tail of the com harvest, we get twenty loads of half- 
rotten dung, and the whole is turned over. The different 
{ materials are well mixed together, and the heap is turned 
twice afterwards during the winter; the burnt clay is 
added by degrees, from July to September. When the 
heap, or any part of it, begins to smoke from the fer¬ 
mentation of fresh refuse, a layer of the burnt clay is 
thrown over it, which sucks up all the goodness as it 
rises; or, more to the purpose, to fix the ammoniacal 
gas. Professor Way has found that raw clay keeps the 
goodness of liquid-manure, as it passes downwards, 
better than burnt clay, but there is no better fixer of the 
gaseous products than dry thirsty burnt clay. At any 
rate, there is no better thing for giving to fine flowers on 
a light soil over a dry bottom, and working it as we do, 
one could hardly perceive, at the last turning of the heap, 
that there was any clay in it; and I am quite sure that 
without some such systematic course for keeping up the 
condition of a large garden, or a small one either, we 
should soon get into a muddle. 
Annuals. —All the hardy annuals, and many that are 
in the lists of half-hardy, may now be sown in the open 
ground. Californian annuals, such as the Nemopliillas, 
Gollinsias, &c., that are sown the first week in April, 
' will be in bloom in Juno; and those sown at the 
| end of the month will not come into flower till the 
I beginning of July. Almost all the annuals will trans- 
! plant when they are a few inches high, so that they may 
; be sown on a warm border, and put out when spring 
j flowers are over by the beginning of May. China Asters 
and all the Marigolds, and Tagetes, will do to be sown 
j in the open border, if the soil and situation are warm 
and dry. I never saw the marigolds come up from 
self-sown seeds in the autumn, but the China Asters 
always do so here, and more especially if they be in peat 
or American beds, and yet they call them half-hardy. 
Biennials. —Several of the best of them will flower 
this autumn, if they are sown now. No one should be 
without a few Sweet Scabious in the autumn; the best 
selections of them and of the annuals are in our former 
lists. 
Perennials. —Any of these which come into bloojn i 
on this side Midsummer, should not be disturbed after 
the first week or ten days in April. The middle and to 
the end of the month is a good time to transplant 
autumnal-flowering perennials, particularly the Asters, 
or Michaelmas Daisies, and it is a thousand pities that 
they are so little cultivated. There were nearly thirty 
kinds of them in a garden where I was many years 
ago, but now I hardly know more than half a dozen 
sorts. Any one, therefore, who may happen to know 
a good selection of the more dwarf kinds, would be 
doing real service in sending the names, heights, and 
colours to our pages. 
Cuttings. —April is not a good time for out-door cut¬ 
tings in general, because everything is on the move now, 
and when a cutting makes new leaves as soon as it is 
planted it is almost sure to die for want of roots. Still, 
many of the bedding Roses that are pruned at this | 
season woidd come from cuttings; and the more surely if | 
put in behind a hedge or wall. This is the right time 
to put in stout cuttings of the Gloire de Rosmnene rose, 
to bed out this time next year. 
Layers of Rhododendrons, Azaleas, hardy Heaths, 
Daphne Cneorum, Laurustinus, Laurels, and almost all 
the evergreens will do well, if the wood of last year is 
buried and fixed well in the ground any time this 
month, and this is the easiest way of increasing a good 
stock of them. Those that I have named require no 
tongueing, but merely to be laid as they are. All the va¬ 
riegated and the yellow-berried Holly will root by layers, 
but require two years to make good rooted plants; and 
if you twist the part where the last year’s growth began, 
it is better than tongueing them like carnations, at least 
it is the safest way, as the wood is brittle and may snap 
like glass if tongued. 
Grafting. —If the weather is fine and dry this is a 
pleasant way of propagation, and there is no end to 
the things that may be grafted. All the beautiful early 
Almonds, large and small, will graft on the wild plum. 
The Caraganas, a set of beautiful shrubs, graft on 
C. arborescens. The Cytisus, and they are many, will all 
graft on the Laburnum. Cotoneasters will graft on 
young Mays or thorns, or on little apple stocks. I have 
seen a young ash sapling eighteen feet high, and as 
straight as a fishing rod, taken up out of a grove, 
grafted with the Weeping ash in a back shed, and then 
planted, and it answered perfectly. The Weepnng labur¬ 
num is still a scarce plant, but it will graft on straight 
stems of the common one easy enough. The Weeping 
Sophora japonica is one of the handsomest plants we 
have; it will only do well on the upright Sophora. 
The best way to learn to graft is this :—go to a laurel- 
bush, and begin with branches about the size of the 
little finger, and as high as your breast, so that you can 
stand up while you are trying the experiment, being 
the easiest way for the back. Make an up cut two 
inches long; tie the piece thus cut off to the same 
branch, and see that it fits by keeping the cut parts 
exactly to each other : thus you learn fitting and tying ; 
after that take a different shoot, and see if you can cut 
that also, so as to fit the stock first cut. Whatever we 
graft on is called a stock. Now any plant that will 
graft at all will do so exactly like this laurel, as well as 
by any of the plans ever tried, when the stock and the 
graft are about the same size, and almost equally so 
though the stock be twice or three times the size of the 
graft. But in this case we can only fit one side of the 
graft to one side of the stock, and the covering of clay 
must be put on more carefully, to keep the air from dry¬ 
ing the part of the stock not covered by the graft. 
Tongue and crown grafting, side grafting, and other 
modes have been explained already. 1). Beaton. 
