September 4.J 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
355 
endure any of our winters in particular situations, while 
the same sorts cannot be kept alive in places not far 
distant. Here all the Protulaccas, and little blue Lo¬ 
belias, Mesembryanthemmn tricolor, Cliina-asters, and 
many others that are thought to be tender, come up 
every spring from seeds self-sown in the autumn ; while 
some very hardy ones, that are troublesome weeds not 
two miles off, I cannot keep over the winter at all. 
Calendula hybrida, a beautiful white, large-flowered 
annual, which, if left to itself when it is first sown in 
the spring, will only last in bloom just five weeks. 
I thinned out a bed of it about the middle of May, when 
it was half grown, and put the thinnings into beds just 
planted with white Petunias, and into two white Verbena 
beds. The Calendula was in good bloom three weeks 
before either the Petunia or Verbena made much show; 
the original bed of the Calendula had to be replanted in 
the third week in July; but some of the plants, not 
choaked by the Petunias, are in flower now ; and if all 
the seed-pods had been carefully picked off as soon as 
the flowers! faded, I think Calendula would dispute 
elbow-room with the white Verbena, but the Petunias 
were too strong for it. At the very end of last April, I 
found myself short of about five hundred plants of some¬ 
thing low, not to be more than a foot high, and I was 
restricted to a good rich pink colour; so that I might 
have had five thousand plants of the required height, 
but without being of that particular colour I could not 
bring them into the new design which was proj^osed 
just for the front of the Albert Tower. Now, I am not 
sure that if I had found out the philosopher’s stone, 
that it could bring me so easily out of this fix, as did a 
little annual which, then for the first time, I thought of, 
and which has since surprised me much. All that I 
could scrape together of the low pink desired, was about 
a hundred good plants of the Pink ivy-leaved geranium, 
and half as many of the Diadematum rubescens geranium, 
but this variety is too reddish to pass for a pink, but a 
drowning man will catch at a straw, and I fixed on a 
new seedling Diadematum, of which I had about thirty 
plants, the one I call Regium, it is not a pink more than 
the D. rubescens, but the two put together would cast 
a pinkish shade over the bed, and for the rest I relied 
on my little annual. Every one of the pink ivy-leaf 
produced three or four cuttings of very young growth, 
and these I knew could be brought out in about a 
month; but for me, who preach so much about plant¬ 
ing beds quite full at the first going off, to wait a month 
for these cuttings would be equivalent to a violent tooth¬ 
ache for the whole month; so the pink-beds, four in 
number, were filled brimful with the Eucaridium grandi- 
Jlorum after the geraniums were put in as an apology of 
planting. The Eucaridium was sown at the beginning 
of April; and for those who do not know it, I may say 
that it is like a purple Clarkia in minature, only the 
colour is nearer to a pink. There was not a gayer set 
of beds in the county at the end of June, and they are 
at this moment, say the end of August, as gay as ever, 
and one cannot tell which is master of the beds, the 
geraniums or the Eucaridium; but the latter, a delicate 
little thing though it be, would have the best of the 
game had the knife been spared. The bed from which 
the Eucaridium was taken was done as soon as the 
Calendula bed, and its usual time of flowering with us 
is just doubled, and there are no signs yet of the least 
fading about any of the plants. I could fill this Com¬ 
panion with similar instances now under my eye, but it 
would only be a repetition of these two. 
Who has kept the Clarkias in bloom from the first of 
June to the middle of September—that is, the same 
plants? I have them so just now, and I think the 
purple will last to the very end of the month. Am I 
not, therefore, justified in writing so earnestly for the 
revival of a selection of the best annuals? But still I 
would not plant them but as helpers to cover the ground 
in May and Juue, and carry on a bloom through these 
months—generally the mid-winter of nine-tenths of our 
British flower-gardens. It is of no use to tell me the 
thing “ can’t be done.” Every person about this garden | 
was as busy last May and June as if about a house on 
lire; besides a very bad planting season, two hundred of 
workmen tearing and pulling about everything they 
could lay their hands, or great lumbering feet, on, to 
help up the tower and what-not. You could not turn a 
corner in our best front garden without encountering 
a great horse, with a Scotch cart full of mould or 
bricks, stones, sand, gravel, and all manner of things, 
or, perhaps, half a dozen of them in couples, pulling 
away at a huge iron girder, or piece of stone, big enough 
to frighten one. Yet, with these drawbacks, by the help 
of annuals, the garden was gay; at least, the beds were 
so all the time. The annuals which shone in May were 
sown last September, and those, or at least the most of 
them, that bloomed in June, were sown from the 20th 
of March to the 10th of April. I said last year, when I 
heard of the usually very foolish arrangements of the 
British Association, that I got my leg into a tight boot; 
it went off and on, however, as easily as an old glove. 
But we must give these associationists a touch of cottage 
economy, and tell them quite plainly, that if they want 
to pick up “ useful knowledge ” in earnest, they must 
learn to put off tlieir sittings till the House of Commons 
arranges the business of the session, and before the 
sporting folks are off to the Highlands. But to our craft. 
Every cutting for the next year should be in and 
rooted as early in the month as possible; cold frames 
are now the best places to put geranium cuttings in 
without pots, and with good protection they may remain 
as we now leave them till next April. Calceolarias, in 
close cold frames, without pots, and with one inch of 
sand on the top, is our arrangement; the plants to be 
potted in November. Verbenas, all in pots, first in close 
cold frames, about the beginning of the month, and a 
little heat by the end of September, if they seem to be 
lagging behind. No flower-garden cutting should have 
much heat in the autumn, it brings on mildew and all 
manner of evils before the winter is over. If the whole 
stock were ready in time to stand out of doors, or with 
the glass lights off for a short time before it is too cold, 
they would run far less risk in winter than such as are 
unnaturally blanched in close heat, to get them up in a 
hurry, when the propagation is put off too long. If the 
smallest sized pots are now put under Verbenas, as they 
do with Strawberry runners for forcing, I believe, after 
all, it is the best plan; any time in October would do to 
take up the pots full of roots, and by giving them a shift 
as soon as they are taken up, then put into a cold frame, 
they will make fine stocky plants before winter. 
D. Beaton. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
A Few more Leguminous (Pea-blossomed) Plants.— 
As contrasting plants to the Iloveas of last week, I shall 
now mention a few good old things with yellow flowers, 
and, first, the 
Goodia lotifolia (Lotus-leaved G.).—The genus was 
named in compliment to Peter Good, a collector for the 
Botanic Gardens at Kew. The species mentioned has 
been in the country the best part of sixty years, but a 
nice specimen of it is not the less beautiful on that 
account. The habit of the plant, if not drawn spindly 
for w r ant of light and air, is rather elegant, though the 
shoots are somewhat long in their mode of growth. The 
leaves arc small, generally in threes, and lotus-like, 
The flow'ers arc large, and a good yellow, with the base 
