September ll.J 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
367 
fear of tap-roots. And now he may go round and fill in 
his trench, cramming lumps of turf and manure into 
every crevice within the circle, and where, through the 
absence of roots, the spade has made extra advances. 
If the compost is tolerably dry, which it ought to be, 
he may tread it slightly as he proceeds. 
The whole being filled in, and, we ought to have said, 
the wounded roots all cut with a sharp knife, the surface 
of the interior of the circle may be eased of all the loose 
soil thereon, aud a coating of the same dressing applied 
—equal in bulk to that removed—and, finally, four 
inches of good half-rotten manure cased all over the 
surface; and, thenceforth, no footsteps should be per¬ 
mitted until the whole has settled. 
In the middle of November we would put the trees 
under a course of pruning, using the knife rather 
severely, especially in thinning out. All decaying 
stumps of course must he removed, and the whole of 
the tree scraped and cleaned thoroughly, extirpating both 
moss and insects. Whilst this is being done, boards 
should be laid beneath to tread on; for if the mulching 
is “ puddled,” the previous operation will he nullified. 
However, if frosty, there will be no occasion for it. As 
soon as pruned, the whole may receive a thorough soak¬ 
ing with dunghill water. Trees thus treated will, in the 
majority of cases, recover much of the freshness of youth 
within a couple of years. R. Errington. 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
About the time that I was invited to become a writer 
in The Cottage Gardener, I had almost made up my 
mind to write a book on my own account, and to call it 
The Confessions of an Old Gardener. In this book 
I intended to relate all the accidents, the mishaps, and 
the disappointments, I had either experienced myself, in 
the affairs of the garden, or had known to have happened 
to other gardeners who started on equal footings with 
me, and to trace, as far as I could, the causes which led 
to such failures; so that the book would be a kind of 
lighthouse to the next race of adventurers. To get this 
lighthouse afloat, I knew it would be necessary to thatch 
it with anecdotes, about gardeners and their patrons, so 
thick as to resist all weathers; or, rather, to make the 
sides of the reader ache with laughing, or to make his 
hair stand on end, or “ both by turns.” But The Cot¬ 
tage Gardener came just in time to spare me the 
labour, and my book from the butter shop. On all fitting 
occasions, however, I have, in these pages, told of as 
many of my failures as it was safe for me to do without 
j altogether damaging my own character, and here is an- 
j other addition to the list. 1 have failed most completely 
j in doing any good with the bed of Fuchsia corolina, my 
next best favourite after the gracilis, and I give it up 
after trying every mode that I could think of; but I quite 
agree with “ Devonian” about growing it against a wall, 
| and also as standards with five feet of clear stem, and a 
| head like a standard rose as big as the stem could carry. 
A hundred such standards in a row, at the back of a 
flower-border, not less than eight or ten feet, would look 
splendid in the extreme. An avenue of them along a 
straight walk would be worth walking ten miles to see; 
the only other plant that I can now think of, if used in 
the same way, that could give so striking an effect, is the 
Humea elegans. People who are easily struck aud pleased 
with a violent contrast, might wish the Humeas and the 
standard Fuchsias to be planted alternately; but I would 
prefer two kinds of Fuchsias in the same way, and my 
second plant would be the Fuchsia Ricartonii, which is 
exactly the same coloured flower as the other, but the 
shape of the flowers and the style of growth would be 
as great a contrast as any other two Fuchsias could pos¬ 
sibly produce ; and of all the family they are the easiest 
to make standards of. 
My next failure was with a beautiful climber, called 
Tecoma jasminoides, better known as a Bignonia. I have 
in vain striven to get this beautiful plant to flower very 
freely in-doors ; but out against a wall, which is protected 
from the Rost, it is a most beautiful tiling, flowering as 
freely as can be from June to October, and it catches 
everybody’s eye who comes near it. The mode of treat¬ 
ment is the same as that prescribed by Mr. Errington 
for a vigorous pear-tree. Main shoots ai'e allowed to 
extend wherever there is room for them, and the side 
branches from these are stopped at a few joints, to form 
clusters of spurs, and on the young wood from these 
spurs the flowers come in long succession. Whenever | 
the current growth refuses to give flowers, it is a sure j 
sign the plant is getting too strong, and a few roots are j 
cut to bring about a balance between them and the 1 
branches. 
Talking of conservatory walls brings to my recollection 
a new idea that has been floating before my eyes for the 
last four or five years ; and, by a few simple experiments, 
I think I have brought down the idea into practical 
working order. Conservatory walls are very aristocrat- 
ical things, very expensive in the first going off, but once 
finished and set a-going, the expense is not nearly so 
much as one would suppose. Now my plan is to have a 
conservatory wall for everybody who has a garden, and 
everybody to build his own conservatory wall, plant it, 
and look after it himself, with the assistance of this 
Cottage Gardener, and I shall stake my head on the 
issue, and not only that, but if I do not succeed in 
rendering this new wall ten times more gay than all the 
big walls in England, I shall never put another pen on 
paper. This new wall need not be a wall at all, but we 
shall call it so for the look of the thing. The height of 
it will be seven feet, and a four feet wide border in front 
of it for the things to grow in. The whole will front the 
mid-day sun, and will be planted with nothing else but 
geraniums, and these only of such kinds as will flower 
on from early in May to Christmas, or rather say, to 
Michaelmas to begin with. The whole length of tho 
wall will be divided into spaces of six feet each, which 
will he effected by pillars projecting three or four inches 
from the line of the wall; And why might not these 
pillars be posts of oak or larch, and the intervening 
spaces be of boards, nailed to the back of the posts, and 
the back of all be banked up, first with turf, and then 
a slope of any angle made up with earth? in short, 
make a fernery of it, or a rock-work, or, may be, a green 
sloping bank. 
Now there are thousands of gardens where all this 
might be made at less cost than even this rough sketch 
would intimate. Fix on a sloping piece of ground facing 
the south, and cut it down perpendicularly, as if for a 
ha-ha fence; three feet or so will be deep enough, the 
earth that must bo removed may be thrown up on the 
top of the cut, and so get the height by that means. I 
have seen miles of these sort of banks made in Scotland 
to build dry stone walls against, that is, stones without 
mortar, for securing young plantations, and for other 
kinds of fences. When the mason gets up with his 
work to the level of the top of the bank, another man 
comes after him, and lays a turf on the top of the wall 
with the grass side downwards, and then another turf on 
the top of that with tho grass side upwards; the loose 
earth from behind is then sloped up to be level with the 
grass coping, and after that grass seeds are sown over all 
the naked earth, and in a few months the whole is green, 
and these walls last out a lifetime. Posts and boards, 
however, with a good coping, will last long enough for 
all that I want, and may be put together as for the back 
of a “ cold pit.” Slabs of slate, a quarter-of-an-inch 
thick and six"feet long, would last for ever, but let us say 
