1 ■/ G 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[June 19. 
which we will presently point to, but enough of cases: 
our business is to incite cultivators to increased obser¬ 
vations whilst it is the season for such tilings; to learn 
to trace from cause to effect, or vice versa, as the case 
may be; and this once habitual, no trouble will appear 
too great to the ardent cultivator to secure thriving and 
creditable crops. Talk of trouble, indeed; the old pro¬ 
verb may apply here — “ lazy folks take most pains.” 
And, indeed, when we see a man driven to take up bis 
trees and replant them, with sundry other matters twice 
or thrice done, one is tempted to apply this proverb. 
However, the fault is, that more err through ignorance 
than sheer idleness. 
In thus handling the affair, it was our purpose to 
show the immense benefits to be derived from summer- 
mulching, and a liberal and timely application of liquid- 
manure in urgent cases. Such may be made to benefit 
most fruit-trees in their hour of need. To clean the 
shoots of the trees with tobacco, &c., although of much 
use for awhile, is but a temporizing expedient, and 
cannot alone prove satisfactory in the end. 
Those of the readers of The Cottage Gardener, 
therefore, who suspect their trees are languishing 
through the causes here described, will do well to apply 
six inches of good rotten manure, immediately following 
with a thorough soakiug of water, if the ground he dry. 
Where unusually heavy crops of fruit exist, such is 
especially beneficial, and the watering should be re¬ 
peated at intervals, even adding liquid-manures, soap¬ 
suds, and soot-water if at hand. In addition, let us 
advise that the leaves of the trees be kept clear of insects 
and free from impurities, and that all unnecessary breast- 
spray about the lower parts of fruit-trees be kept under 
by stopping; such, too often diverts the sap into useless 
channels, to the detriment of the true-bearing wood. 
R. Errington. 
THE ELOWER-GARDEN. 
Annuals. —From the middle of May to the turn of 
Midsummer, the flower-gardens planted after the good 
old fashion—that is, borders filled with herbaceous 
plants, and annuals in patches here and there—are, or 
should be, in their prime of beauty; Roses and Rose 
Bays, or Rhododendrons, come in in succession, and, 
after them, Hollyhocks, Dahlias, Michaelmas daisies, 
Golden rods, and Sunflowers carry on to the end of the 
autumn. Novv-a-days, however, Midsummer is, perhaps, 
the less gay time of the whole season, under the system 
oi massing plants of a kind together; yet it should not 
be put very far from it; although we do not choose to 
be bothered with beds of herbaceous plants, to save us 
the trouble and risk of removing them when out of 
flower to make room for a fresh lot just coming up to 
the mark, still, we have abundance of substitutes in gay- 
coloured annuals, of which it may be truly said, that 
nine-tenths of the gardening world do not even under¬ 
stand the use of, or their proper management if they 
did. 
According to the prevailing style of planting flower- 
gardens, nine-tenths of the best annuals, that is, those 
which do not keep in bloom more than five or six weeks, 
should be used as auxiliaries among the newly-planted- 
out things, to keep up a gay appearance in the beds, 
while the summer plants are establishing themselves, 
thus avoiding the blank which would otherwise take 
place, between the spring and summer flowers. At 
planting-out time every plant should be put in in some 
regular order, say in rows in any direction, then the 
spaces between these rows come in for the annuals, 
which may be transplanted there from the seed or 
nursery beds either before or at the same time with the 
summer flowers, so as to cover the whole surface of the 
beds at once, and be in bloom as long as they last, or 
till the spreading of the more permanent plants renders 
it necessary to pull them up. Now, the kind of know¬ 
ledge necessary to accomplish this varies exceedingly, 
and one man’s practice will not avail much to his ten 
next neighbours in some instances. One man gets 
earlier cabbages, or peas, or something else, than his 
friend on the other side of the way, because the situa- 
| tion, or the soil, of his garden is different. It is the 
same with annuals; to be told that a certain annual, 
which I sowed on the twelfth of August or September, 
was in bloom on the tenth or twentieth of May, would 
just be as likely to lead another person wrong as not; 
his plants, treated the same way, might be in bloom by 
the middle of April, and be going to seed by the time 
he wanted to transplant them into his May arrange¬ 
ment. It is only by noting down the dates of sowing, 
transplanting, and time of coming into and going out of 
bloom, for several seasons, that an average can be 
struck for a given locality, and that is the reason why 
our books are not filled with such details as would lead 
a stranger into the secret of turning annuals to their 
true purpose in the flower-garden. 
The best example of this style that I can refer to, 
near London, is in the beautiful garden of the Duke of 
Devonshire, at Chiswick. This place is open to the 
public who visit the garden of the Horticultural Society 
at the July exhibition; and, in passing from one garden 
to another, we have to pass through a piece of, I believe, 
old kitchen-garden ground, and here the scene is made 
quite gay with the scarlet ten-week stock, which is so 
managed as to he in flower by the first week in July. 
The same head and the same hands could arrange and 
manage to have the same annual in bloom in any week 
or month in the whole summer, and so with almost all 
other annuals whatever. At best, annuals of six weeks’ 
duration are mere temporary things, and the use of them 
for temporary purposes seems more natural; at any rate, 
much better than to do away with them altogether, or to 
substitute them for more lasting plants; and if that is 
not enough, I would rather plant all the spare places 
in flower-heds newly planted with daisies or spinach, 
than to see bare fallows in them for many weeks, as at 
present in many places. 
Nemopiiila maculata. —When I first saw a bed of 
this it was early in July, and I put it down as a dead 
failure; since then I have seen it in perfection, and I 
have seen an experiment with it and the blue one which 
made the most charming bed I ever saw. It was tried 
in different ways, but the best was from plants that were 
removed at the end of February from the seed-bed ; they 
were planted in rows nine inches apart each way ; the 
soil was light, but as rich as richness could make it. 
Two plants of Maculata and one of Insignis, or the 
spotted and blue: thus one-third of the bed was of the 
blue sort, and two-thirds of the light with purple spots; 
the flowers or colours were as regularly disposed all over 
i the bed as if they were set by hand; a bed with equal 
| numbers of the two was gay, of course, hut appeared as 
nothing to the striking effect of the former mixture. 
! A less number of the blue does not answer at all. I 
! hope every one who delights in the simple combinations 
that can be produced by very simple flowers will try a 
bed of these two pretty annuals next spring ; the seeds 
; of both may be sown any day in August. Those that I 
| saw were from self-sown seeds last July; hut if we had 
had a bal'd winter they must have perished, as they were 
i strong plants by the end of October. 
Bedding Geraniums. —This season I have seven now 
varieties of the perpetual-flowerers under experiment, in 
1 order to determine their fitness to make gay beds; none 
of them have yet been named, nor will they, unless they 
are fully as good as the best of the old ones, and, of 
I course, of a distinct colour. No one can prove a gera- 
