THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
! April 14. 
appeared to have forgotten the directions 1 often gave 
I for doiug the thing properly. Now that I am going to 
| make a fresh start with beds and bedding plants, and 
all that concerns them and myself, I must, in the first 
| place, forego the credit of having first named this bed. 
! It was named to me incidentally by a gentleman, whom 
I found admiring it one morning before breakfast; he 
i was a visitor at Slirubland Park; had seen it the even¬ 
ing before, and, having a painter’s eye, he went out 
early to see the effect under a different state of the sun 
and atmosphere. “ Well, Beaton, how in the world did 
you come to think of this combination of colours?” 
j “1 did not think anything about it, sir; it was sug¬ 
gested by Lady Middleton: how do you like it?” 
j “Like it! 1 never saw anything in this way so beau¬ 
tiful ; I have just written to Her Grace the Duchess of 
Sutherland to say how you plant here, and that you 
have one bed so planted as to look like sliot-silk." All 
the parties are alive to this day, so there is no chance 
for me to claim the credit of planting or naming the 
shot-silk bed; all that I can say about it is, that there 
never was a better combination of colours made in one 
bed, and that of all the beds that one can make or 
think of, this is the best for a trial of skill. If I were 
engaging a first-rate artist in flower-gardening for my 
own hobby, I would merely question as to how he would 
manage the planting of a shot-silk bed in a new locality, 
that is, in auy place where he never planted before. 
I would be at the bottom of his brains ere he was half¬ 
way through with his explanation, and if I thought well 
of him, lie should have his own way, situation, soil, 
number of plants, and the exact ages and sizes of every 
one of them, and, by the middle of next August, I could 
judge if I had a good flower-gardener or not. I never 
yet met with a correspondent of The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener face to face, or by letter, who would act thus, 
that is, let a new man have his own way for once; and 
as human nature is the same all over the world and in 
among the cabbages, we can no more convince a man 
against his will, than force a gardener to success in a 
branch of his craft about which he is not allowed to 
open his mouth. 
The second plant in the combination of a shot-silk 
bod is Verbena venosa, not venusta, as the printers put 
it in their dog-latin. Very old plants of the Geranium 
are the best, good bushy ones, all of one size, and from 
lifteen to eighteen inches high. If they could be all 
eighteen inches high, and bushy in proportion, and the 
bed for them to be nearly level, they ought to be planted 
just one foot apart all over the bed, and the outside 
row at just six inches from the edge. Plants lower 
than a foot, of the Variegated Scarlet Geranium are of 
no use for this bed; but at that height, and up to 
eighteen inches, they would answer, even were they 
single-stemmed; the only difference would be, that four 
or five times the number of bushy plants would need to 
be planted. Then the rule is this; plant with varie¬ 
gated scarlet Geraniums not less than a foot high, and 
so thick, that the outside leaves of all the plants 
nearly touch all over the bed the day it is planted—say 
about the 20lh of May. 
The Verbena is to be planted, according to the mild¬ 
ness of the spring, from the first of April to the first of 
May, unless the Verbena was prepared and potted in 
March, and kept in the pots until the Geraniums were 
planted, which would answer just as well, or better for 
amateurs. The number of Verbena plants it is almost 
impossible to determine, as that depends on the strength 
of the plants and the goodness of the soil in the bed ; 
therefore, we must take the same rule as with the Gera¬ 
niums, and say that enough of the Verbena is planted 
to cover the bed all over without Geraniums at all. 
Strong pieces of the underground shoots, or, as some 
would call them, roots of the Verbena, are divided every 
spring for this planting, each piece about six inches 
long:—when the pieces are to be potted for May planting, 
all that is necessary is to double them, or coil them 
round an inch below the surface, but when they are to 
be planted at once into the bed the pieces need not be 
so long, and they may be planted in drills an inch deep, 
the pieces lying flat in the drills, which is safer than 
planting them with a dibble, as if the wrong end is put 
down, that piece seldom grows. When the two have 
grown a little, the dark green Verbena leaves cover the 
ground, and make a carpet for the naked stems of the 
old Geraniums; but before the ground is quite covered 
with the Verbena, a few of the plants will throw up a 
flowering-shoot, here and there, and they must be cut 
back to the level of the general crop. This is the first 
dressing; the second dressing consists of thinning the 
Verbena, if it is too thick, or thick in parts of the bed, 
and not in others, some of the Verbena plants may 
require to be pulled up altogether. The Geraniums 
require nothing to be done for them all the season, 
but the Verbenas must be gone over every ten days or a 
fortnight all through the season, and every time they 
will require some thinning and stopping. The first 
show of flowers generally require to be cut out before 
they are half open, as they come from the centre of the 
principals, and after these, flowers come from the side- 
shoots, which do not rise so high. When the flowers 
of the Verbena come too crowded in some parts they 
must be thinned; when the plants threaten to over¬ 
grow the Geraniums, pull them gently till you hear 
some of the roots snap, and that will check them for a 
time. In short, the eye and the hand must keep a 
constant balance between the Verbena and the Gera¬ 
nium throughout the season, and that balance should 
not let the Verbena flowers rise above the Geranium 
flowers more than three or four inches, while some of 
the flower-spikes of the Verbena ought to be on a level 
with the Geraniums, and some lower still, merely 
pushing up their purple points among the variegated 
leaves of the Verbena. Anything beyond this, or not 
up to it, must be a complete failure, as the shades never 
come without the balance; or if they do, and the 
Verbena is out of balauce, your shot-silk will look as if 
it was stained with port wine, or with London porter, 
according to the degree of excess in the leaves, or in the 
flower-spikes of the Verbena. 
As for the best situation for this bed, it cannot come 
amiss where a neutral bed answers best. It should not 
be placed too near to bods of one colour. The best 
situation for a silk-shot bed would be the centre bed iu 
a group, in which all the beds were planted in mixtures 
of two or more colours or shades, as a bed of “ fancy 
Geraniums;” a second of the florist section, as Priory 
Queen, Sun-rise, and the like; then a bed of Mangle's 
Variegated Geranium— the best of all the “ variegates”— 
mixed with Beauty Supreme Verbena, as was done at 
Claremont last year, and is the next best bed I know 
after the shot-silk one. Three kinds, or, perhaps, two 
kinds would be better, of Diadematum, for another bed ; 
throe kinds of purplish Verbenas, of which Ileloise 
would be one, might make another bed, and so on all 
round. I have, myself, attempted this kind of planting, 
but it requires some practice to learn the right kinds of 
growth and habit in the plants on different soils, as well 
as a knowledge of how the colours in the mixtures 
agree together. In fact, this is, or might be made, an 
improved mode of mixed beds or borders on the old 
herbaceous plant system, and is a very useful style in 
large places, both for making a variety in a scene, and 
for getting rid of odds and ends of plants which we 
often find it difficult to dispose of, and yet caunot use to 
any good advantage in regularly coloured beds or 
arrangements. 
In making green permanent beds or stripes, a new 
