April 17.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
85 
to be impossible, the information would be of immense 
advantage to all those who have not a practical know¬ 
ledge of the effects of liquid manure on the different 
plants they grow. I have lately read in the Gardeners 
Chronicle, that superphosphate of lime is the best tiling 
yet discovered for encouraging a transplanted tree to 
make fresh roots in abundance, and that brought to my 
j mind a very early idea of my own, which, although I 
i never yet got rid of it, seems like looking for the philo¬ 
sopher’s stone. It is that some preparation of something, 
or the essence of something else, might be hit on which 
would cause cuttings of all sorts to root as easily as 
those from a Verbena or Fuschia, and whether I live 
j to see the day or not, I am almost persuaded the 
i preparation will be found out some day or other; per- 
! haps this quality in this superphosphate is the first step 
! for the discovery of this grand secret. 
For some years past I have thought of making an 
early May bed of a little trailing plant with blue flowers, 
which is seen by road sides or banks all over the king¬ 
dom; the name of it is Veronica chamcedrys, or Ger¬ 
mander Speedwell; but I have been too late every 
season in following up the resolution till this spring. 
There is no question at all about this plant making the 
very richest bed of that colour that can be made in May. 
This every gardener allows; hut what I want to prove is, 
whether by taking this plant at the end of March, and 
so on to the end of April, cutting oft’ most of its trailing 
branches, dividing the roots into little separate plants, 
and then setting them in a rich bed, 1 cannot cause it 
to flower a month or six weeks later than its usual 
time, and also keep in flower double the time it does in 
the wild state. I shall, also, try and raise seedlings 
from it under cultivation. I have, over and over again, 
done the same thing with the Heartsease; and last season 
I took a quantity of old strong plants of them, just 
about this time as they were coming into bloom, cut off 
the shoots and divided the roots, in short, treated them 
in all respects as I have just done with the little Veronica. 
Some of the plants divided into eight pieces, and all of 
them pay well for this treatment. Their flowering 
season is put back till near Midsummer; but they never 
fail to go on growing and flowering to the middle or end 
of September. 
Now by burning the label on which the name of a 
new pansey comes home, by keeping three or four kinds 
of yellow together, and the same with the other colours 
in this group, and forgetting the properties, circles, and 
other geometric figures, a flower-gardener might make 
five or six distinct kinds of beds of the Pansies, or 
edgings of so many colours to suit other beds, by this 
system, without running the hazard of being led away 
into the mysteries of Floribunda. At any rate, as this 
is the proper season, any one can try the experiment of 
late-flowering pansies without the aid of seedlings, and 
without spoiling the spring bloom, as all the best may 
be allowed to do as usual. I never could see any beauty 
in a bed planted with all sorts of pansies; let any one 
try the difference of keeping the more marked varieties 
by themselves, and then the next colour —not the name, 
for names spoil all their real beauty—and so on by 
shades or distinct colours, instead of mixing them as 
they come in, and if he is not a florist of the first water, 
he will in time come into my views of arranging them. 
A yellow edging, a white edging, and a blue the same, 
can easily be made for summer flower-beds by the late 
dividing of some old plants of vigorous habits, and 
! mixed edgings for neutral beds could also be formed, 
j but it ought to be on some fixed plan. Say, that you can 
make out nine or ten well-marked shades out of an old 
pansey bed; plant the number in succession according 
to your taste, and begin afresh on the same arrangement 
till you get all round the bed ; to learn how to do this 
to the best advantage, and to suit one’s own taste, the 
best way is to gather a few single flowers from a whole 
collection, then to stick them in the ground, or in rows 
in a box of sand or earth in-doors, and to shift them 
about until you are satisfied with the arrangement. 
Then number your shades from one to ten or twelve, or 
less or more, as the case may be ; then take up number 
one and prove it with the plant from which it was 
picked, and mark that plant number one, and so on with 
all the rest; and if you take care of the number sticks, 
you can, at any future period, hit on the succession of 
shades whether the plants be in bloom or not; and a 
still easier method is to plant one plant of each colour 
or shade in a row in some border by themselves, for 
stock plants to get cuttings from, or to be divided 
another year. In this way there would be no use for 
number sticks or tallies. Chrysanthemums, Asters, 
Phloxes, Hollyhocks, Pentstemons, Potentillas, and a 
hundred other sorts, are thus arranged by some gar¬ 
deners for stock, to save them trouble, and to avoid the 
chances of losing or mixing the tallies or number sticks. 
All that one has to mind is from what end of a row the 
planting commenced, and that, of course, would be 
entered in a book or catalogue kept on purpose. Every 
one keeps some kind of garden book, and in large places 
the garden book is kept as correctly as the trade account 
books. That portion of our garden book which refers 
to the flower-garden is thus arranged. Every bed and 
group of beds, with the borders, &c., is marked in outline 
on succesive pages, and every bed is numbered, or has 
some particular name, the opposite page being left blank 
for making notes on, and for entering the names of the 
plants that are to occupy each bed next year. Then a 
duplicate is made, one for the gardener, and one for the 
artist who designs the compositions. A fresh set of 
these duplicates are made every year, and the old ones 
are carefully preserved for reference in arranging the 
new ones. 
Now, it does not matter much where the artist is when 
the new arrangement is made, whether in London, 
Paris, Rome, or “ in the country; ” all that is requisite is 
to write home that such and such numbers should be 
planted with such and such plants, or even with such 
and such colours ; that it is desirable to have the whole 
in their best garb from such a time to the end of the 
season. People who sit down at their leisure to write 
long letters about short matters, can have no idea what 
can be done on a single page of small post, if done 
systematically and to the point. D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
One-shift System of Potting. —Many inquiries 
having been made respecting this subject, I shall en¬ 
deavour to redeem various promises, by shortly explain¬ 
ing the subject. 
1st. The peculiarity of the system may be said to 
consist in giving a plant in a pot one large shift instead 
of frequent small ones. Thus, instead of moving a 
plant successively from a three to a five-inch pot, thence 
to a seven or a eight, and thence again to a ten or a twelve, 
allowing the roots to become matted at the sides of the 
pot, or merely to reach there, according as flowering or 
growing are the objects aimed at, the plant is moved at 
once from a three, four, or five-inch pot, into one of 
eight, twelve, or sixteen inches in diameter. It is seldom 
that a cutting, or a seedling, or a very small plant, is at 
once moved into a large one, as during its very small 
state it can be more safely, easily, and economically 
attended to in a small pot. Indeed, in all places of 
limited extent, and where the most has to be made of 
the room, the large shift system would at first, until the 
plants got a good size, be very unattractive, owing to the 
