September 25.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
397 
us say tlie row next the silvery belt to he a foot high, the 
second row to he eighteen inches high, and the third two 
feet, and after a little growth the whole will make a sloping 
bank of scarlet, thirty inches, or three feet in the angle; 
and the middle should not be less than three feet through, 
of the Ageratum: — if all goes on well to the middle of 
July, nothing of the Ageratum is seen but the flowers, 
and no part of it should ever be seen in a flower-garden, 
if possible, but the flowers. Last year, and the one 
before, I had a hundred questions about the best ar- 
| rangement for a single bed, by itself, in such and such 
parts of the garden, and this year I planted one exactly 
according to the above proportions, to see if it could be 
described from life, or actual being; and if there is any 
j truth in the saying, that “ what every body says is true,” 
i this must be a beautiful thing, for every Friday, during 
! the season, part of my business is to conduct visiting 
| parties over the gardens, and not one party missed this 
j bed, nor failed to make some remarks about it, so that I 
| am quite confident in recommending it. It is good also 
j as an arrangement for a large rustic or other basket—and 
, baskets are endless sources for questions about how best 
to fill them. But I have not done with the silvery 
j plant ill the “wilderness” yet The “wilderness” is a 
I steep, sloping bank, close on one side of a long walk in 
\ one part of the garden here, and the bank is planted with 
all manner of things, the silvery plant among the rest, 
and, like the Venetian Sumach in the autumn ( Rhus 
Cotinus), not one passes that way without pointing it 
out first. As a conspicuous point, in a dark recess, at a 
distance, in landscape, masses of large plants of this 
Sea-Ragwort, or silver-bush, would be invaluable. In 
| large houses, where they have always some flowers or 
plants in bloom on the table during dinner, or in the 
drawing-room after dinner, I am told this is one of the 
best that can be used, if grown into good specimens in 
pots, more particularly in winter, and where the paper¬ 
ing, or colouring, or window curtains are of a red, yellow, 
or crimson colour; and, last of all, the silvery plant is a 
good subject for a rock-garden—for the last five years a 
lai'ge plant of it stood out in a hollow block of wood 
here, a yard from the ground, with no more soil than 
! would do for a Cactus, or a Houseleek, and it was never 
1 watered, so that it must have the power of witlistand- 
{ ing dry summers on rockworlc. 
I shall now compare notes with S. N. V., beginning 
at page 374. He has found the sweet-scented geranium 
(graveolens) hardier than the scarlets; and so it is, and 
so are all the wild species that I have tried. Every one 
of them stands more hardship than finer sorts got 
under cultivation; the Fair Helen is as hardy as any 
| of the race, and Prince of Orange is the noxt hardiest. 
These three would only require a single mat over them 
to keep the frost from them, if they were planted against 
the wall. On dry soil, Mr. Rivers’s plan of packing the 
surface of the beds of Scarlet Geraniums with six inches 
of moss, will preserve all the kinds of scarlets, as I 
have proved; but there is no advantage in the plan 
next season, as respects their flowering, and they can 
always be preserved dry in-doors in winter. Zauschneria 
Oalifornica I took all up last April, early in the month, 
and divided the roots a good deal, then planted them, 
! and several beds and rows of it in different parts of the 
garden are much better than I ever saw it before. That 
seems the best way to get it to flower very late in the 
season, and to keep down the profusion of leaves. I 
have already said how well it does with the Fuchsias. 
Salvias, —bad luck to them!—I was never so much 
deceived as with the fulgens this season. Last autumn, 
before the frost, I cut down a fine bed of them, and 
thatched it, and was dreaming all the winter how the 
Prince would be surprised to seo them so fine at that 
early period, because they would come in so early;— 
early, indeed ! All I will say, however, is that they will 
not do at all for heels left out this way. Among shrubs, or 
on a wide border, a plant here and there, which stood the 
winter, is all very well. Veronica speciosa requires just to i 
be kept from the frost with us; it blooms finely, and seeds | 
abundantly. If grafted on the old Veronica clecussata, \ 
which is quite hardy, I have no doubt it would stand 
our ordinary frosts, because the growth would be rather 
checked on the clecussata, and, therefore, the shoots 
would get better ripened. Try all the new Veronicas 
this way; and by all means try to cross them, to get 
fine hardy bushes. Have any of our readers ever seen | 
Veronica clecussata in flower? I never did; but that is 
the one to turn the constitution of speciosa and others, 
so as to enable them to live on the banks of the Beauly, 
about the falls of Iiilmorack, which the Countess 
Neuilly and the princes so much admired the other day, 
and where I first learnt to catch salmon flying in the 
air. Verbenas: all the very dwarf creeping ones, and 
particularly the scarlets of that character, are immensely 
improved when they live out a few years. I once knew 
a plant of the old melindris which stood out six winters. 
It was a real beauty. Verbena pulchella and pulcliella 
alba, with Sdbinii, live out here year after year. Calceo¬ 
larias : I have one of corymbosa, the sort which nature, 
or, rather, art has produced, as it were, on purpose for 
the Shrubland Gardens, in a block of wood, in the 
“ wilderness,” where it stood for many years, and once 
endured about 30° of frost uninjured, — it always 
blooms the whole season. I cannot account for S. N. V’s 
calceolarias going off the bloom so early, after standing 
out the winter. Fuchsias, also, are as if they were made 
on purpose for these gardens. They are no trouble, no 
cost, and yet they are the admiration of all who see 
them. Gracilis, Riccartonii, the old coccinea, and those 
newer ones which take after these, should be cut down 
close to the ground every year, otherwise they lose 
much of their beauty and usefulness. The globosas, and 
all the large new ones, on the other hand, go on im¬ 
proving from year to year, where we keep the frost from 
them. Blue Anagallises are touchy things, and from 
his account of them, I can toll the kind of soil in the 
garden of S. N. V. They answer better on strong loam 
not enriched with anything. Isotoma axillaris; a beauty. 
Never sow a seed of it ; never put in a cutting of it in 
the spring, and never keep an old plant of it over the j 
winter; and my word for it, you will be perfectly 
satisfied with it. Put in a lot of cuttings of it imme¬ 
diately. Kentish Ilcro Calceolaria is perfection with us 
every year, but nothing is too rich for it; the soil, also, 
should be strong, and if the situation is a little screened 
from the sun and high winds, all the better. Fancy 
Antirrhinums, unless the soil suits them particularly, 
are not worth the trouble they give. Sow seeds from 
the best old sorts at the end of June, prick out in Au¬ 
gust, and plant out the following spring, and do not 
allow them to seed. This is the right way to have one’s 
Snapdragons as fine as Calf’s-snouts. D. Beaton. 
Since the above was written, we have received the ■ 
following from a valued friend relative to “ the silver j 
plant” mentioned by Mr. Beaton. 
“ Cineraria maritima is a most useful plant for vase | 
decoration both in-doors and out, excepting always that 
it may not be brought into contrast, either with stone i 
architecture out-of-doors, or with light-coloured hangings 
in-doors. We have seen it become a very striking j 
object on the turf, and especially when, in walking along, i 
the eye catches it between itself and a fine bright bed of j 
scarlet or blue. But amongst the most charming things i 
wo remember seeing, we cannot forbear mentioning two 
fine pyramidal plants in the windows of a handsome 
drawing-room; during the day they were beautiful, 
supported as they were on either side by the graceful 
folds of the crimson drapery; but far more so by night, 
