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THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
this kind of work properly; they soon get tired of it, 
and few boys have their brains ripe enough to be trusted 
with shading on this training system; steady women 
are the best hands for it. 
There is nothing at the Great Exhibition in Hyde 
Park from which a flower-gardener can learn half so 
much as in the way they arrange the shades of colours, 
particularly the wools and worsted things from Germany, 
and the gallery of “ Stained-glass of All Nations,” unless 
it be Mr. Owen Jones’s disposition of colours for the 
house itself. We are sadly behind in arranging colours 
in our flower gardens; the subject is a difficult one, and 
I am quite sure that the best arrangement in one garden, 
either on grass or gravel, is not the one adapted best for 
some other gardens, and that to copy indiscriminately 
from one another is not making the best of our plants 
or our particular localities. But what we are to do now 
is to make the best of what we have on hand. 
The laws and rules for managing edgings of beds, and 
the training of the plants, take another turn when a 
particular plant is used as an edging, such as, for in¬ 
stance, the Virginian Stock. These edge-plants may, 
and should be, kept cut on the sides for two reasons; 
first, to mark them out as distinct from the rest in the 
bed, and to keep them from making seed-pods; any 
plant that is allowed to make seeds in a flower-garden 
soon loses the character for which it is grown, and if it 
be an annual, as the Stock in question, the season is 
soon over with it, unless the seeding parts are cut away 
as fast as they appear; therefore, we are compelled, as 
it were, to keep such edgings clipped. Sweet Alyssum 
is another of the same class; also, the Silene pendula, 
with its bright pink blossoms, is as good an edging 
plant as any we have, and where it is grown half-wild 
in patches on a bank or mixed border, a little care in 
cutting out the seed-shoots will keep it in bloom the 
whole of the season without ever appearing as being 
cut and clipped. Whoever can manage to keep a row 
of Mignonette in bloom from May to October will be 
able to keep this Silene, also, the whole time; for they 
require exactly the same kind of treatment in every other 
respect, as well as in pruning. Either may be sown in 
the open ground from January to September; no ground 
can be too rich for them, and they will succeed very 
well in the driest, thinnest, and poorest soils. They 
require to be well thinned out before they begin to 
flower, and when they are in bloom both of them will 
ripen seeds on the bottom of a shoot long before the 
top part has done flowering; then the rule, by which 
they are kept on their legs the whole season, is to go 
over the plants once in ten days or so, and to cut away 
every shoot as soon as one-third of its length is in seed ; 
and in gathering Mignonette for bouquets or glasses, 
that is the stage at which it ought to be cut. Never cut 
Mignonette when it is just coming into flower, but always 
select those branches of it which have a lot of seed-pods 
at the bottom. The pods are easily got rid of by passing 
the parts between the fore-finger and thumb; but 
remember that whether Mignonette is wanted for cut- 
flowers or not, it must be thus cut all through the 
season, and it is just the same with the Silene pendula-, 
there is only one instance in which the two differ in the 
least: Mignonette is bad to remove from place to place; 
it does not like transplanting; but the Silene may be 
transplanted with the greatest ease in any stage of its 
existence, when in full flower as well as when in the 
“ t rough leaf” from the seed. As an edging it, and the 
Virginian Stock, will bear clipping as well as box 
or yew. 
Petunias should be cut in, shoot by shoot, as soon as 
the whole bed is well covered, and the branches interlace 
into one compact mass; then they never look as if they 
were clipped. At the first going off some of the petunia 
plants will grow much stronger than the rest, and such 
[July 3. 
ought to be stopped as soon as their habit is perceived; 
otherwise the bed will look in waves, or in hills and 
hollows, always a sign of neglect. The whole should be 
so managed that they would appear to a stranger as it 
every plant in the bed was exactly oi the same strength, 
and that the knife had never touched any one of them. 
About this time, that is, as soon as a petunia bed is got 
into this regular shape all over, is the right time to 
support the plants throughout the bed, by placing small 
sticks at regular distances among the plants. These 
sticks should be sufficiently low to be covered by the 
leaves so as not to be seen ; this plan is not necessary 
in all places, only where the situation is exposed, and 
where the plants are liable to be blown about by high 
winds. Wherever petunias grow rank, however, it is a 
safe plan to stick them, as they are liable to be beaten 
down by heavy rains in the autumn. 
Salvia patens and Dahlias that are to be kept low by 
training them down to the surface, should be begun with 
as early as the shoots are long enough. Here and there 
the central stem of these salvias shoots up rapidly, and 
long before others; but such ought at first to be stopped, 
so as to get four or five from the very bottom, as if they 
get long they are not so easily trained afterwards. The 
other blue salvia, S. cliamcedrioides, should be trained 
down to the very surface of the ground from their first 
growth, like verbenas, otherwise a bed of them soon 
gets untidy. This is the bed in which the blue Nemo - i 
phila tells so well in June and July, as the salvia does 
not make much of a show till late in July, when the 
Nemophila is nearly over. 
The American Groundsel ought to be guarded with 
sticks like the Petunia in all exposed places, as it is 
very apt to be broken or blown about with high winds. 
All the Lupines, but particularly the large ones, as 
Hartuegii and mutabilis, should now have the centre 
shoot stopped, so as to get the plants bushy from near the 
bottom. I never heard of any one training these 
lupines down to the ground like the blue salvias ; but I 
think if they were begun in good time they would answer 
well that way, as they would readily make side shoots 
along the whole length of the main stems. 
It is not often that one can find time to do much in 
the way of training with any of the breeds of Scarlet 
Geraniums; but small beds of them, from very young 
plants propagated on purpose for low beds, may be 
assisted to keep low by going over the plants just now, 
and pinching out the centre buds just above the last 
flower-stalk; this plan would increase the size of the 
individual flowers, and cause the plants to break into 
more shoots lower down. I have often managed some 
of them that way, and kept a bed within bounds that 
would otherwise get too high, or top-heavy as it were; 
and from what I have seen of them, I am of opinion 
that where scarlet geraniums get too much to leaf in the 
autumn, that this way of stopping, with a little thinning 
of the young shoots from the bottom, is the best and 
safest cure for them. To pick off lots of their largest 
leaves every time one has to regulate the bed, is the 
next best plan of hand management; but shallow, poor 
soils are the fundamental cure for them and all other 
plants which run too much to leaf, and do not blossom 
freely. In our dry soil here, with our high situation, 
our Geraniums are at their best in September and 
October, and they are then so firm and ripe that early 
frosts never injure them. D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
A Faggot or Trifles.—“Air give as freely and as 
plentifully as you can,” is a rule you will find in almost 
every authority upon gardening, as respects our fa- 
