September li. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
423 
seeds. The next best move for this purpose, is to 
select your favourite colours a little earlier, and have 
them transplanted into the kitchen-garden, away from 
all such flowers, and to put them in close to a south 
or west wall, the same as Lettuce-plants, and to fasten 
them back to the wall, so as to keep them from being 
blown about with the wind; then to have some handy 
covering for throwing off heavy x’ains. 
It may be a mere notion, but I always thought that 
transplanted Asters, just as they began to open their 
flowers, gave better seeds than those that stood even in 
better positions without that check. Saving seeds, is 
a sure sign of one being in earnest about flowers; but 
saving seeds is seldom saving money ; it is only a saving 
of one’s temper; for you are as sure to launch out just 
as much money on seeds, or plants, as if you never saved 
a single seed in your life-time; but it secures you good 
and superior varieties of many things; and such plants 
as suit your particular soil come better from your 
own seeds than from strange seeds; and when you 
find them falling off, you must give up saving that 
kind for two or three years, and then make choice of the 
best plants from the new stock of seed to save seeds 
from. If we were as industrious about flower-seeds as 
they are in Germany, and some parts of France, we 
might do wonders; for our autumn climate is so much 
more variable than with them, without taking our 
fickle summers into the account, that the difference 
in the degrees of ripeness would, or ought to, give 
us different varieties from those that are constantly 
appearing among the foreign crops ; but we are 
not clever enough at that branch of gardening; 
and the consequence is, that our seed trade is getting 
more and more into the hands of sharpers. At any 
rate, let us not be at the mercy of those sharpers for all 
our seeds ; let us save all we can; and what we must buy, 
let it not be from low dealers, whose seeds are often too 
dear at a gift. 
The last half of last August was the best time for 
saving early seeds which I remember; but that was too 
early for China Asters, of which there are now four or 
five distinct breeds, and all of them seem as much im¬ 
proved as improvement can be pushed; but, as they 
have a constant tendency to degenerate with any slack¬ 
ness or inferior cultivation, we ought to watch them 
accordingly, and be as constant in our endeavours to 
keep them up to the best standard, for they are now so 
fashionable, and are always so useful in the flower-garden, 
that no one can do without some of them; and if only a 
dozen plants, why not of the very best? But the 
greatest use of the China Aster is, that out of it, the 
highest problem of combining harmonious, or of con¬ 
trasting, colours, could be made in a bed from the 
different varieties, a thing which cannot, at present, be 
said of any one genus of plants; and this is the proper 
time to make selection of the tints for planting a bed 
next year; and also to mark the heights of tho different 
kinds ; for, without a proper distribution of the different 
heights of the plants in a bed, the best arrangement of 
colours may be ruined. I was in a large garden, last 
week, which I must not name, because it showed the best 
confusion of kinds and colours of all the flower-gardens 
I have seen. Tho China Asters in this garden were most 
magnificent; but they were disposed of in the beds just 
as if Jupiter had scattered the seeds from the clouds in a 
great rage. The average height of most of the plants was 
twenty inches, but some of them were so dwarf that the 
heads of bloom were scarcely raised from the soil; and 
yet these Poinpones occupied tho same amount of space 
as the tallest; and they stood all over the beds as if 
they came by chance. All that seemed to pass through 
the brains of the planter at that time was, that all the 
Aster beds should be full of plants. The colours, he, 
probably, could not know, as they were written in 
German; the habit of the kinds the same; for they 
were all Greek, or German, or Gaelic to him. A 
mixture of the three, very likely; which I introduce here, 
as another instance of the loss of working our Aster 
beds, so to speak, with imported seeds, when we could 
save our own seeds of them just as well. At all events, 
make up your mind never to plant a whole bed from any 
of the fancy seeds wo import, till you see the colours 
yourself the first year; as, if you do, depend on it, cri¬ 
tics, or no critics, will not look on your beds so indul¬ 
gently as I have looked on those of the said garden ; but 
then, I know the difference ; the very impossibility of 
planting as it should be done, which the great bulk of 
people never think of, but will set you and I down as 
clumsy planters, and as having no taste for colours, or 
any kind of show, except the lowest in the scale. That 
is—between you and I—a very vulgar taste. 
Now, to save us from all this, for the future, just begin 
this very day, and mark out six or seven good tints in 
our Aster blooms, and put a number-stick to each kind, 
and note the colour and the height in the garden book. 
But to begin fairly, let us say we have only two kinds of 
Asters, and both are of the same height—a very good 
double-white, and a very large, dark double-blue one. 
Now, with only these two. one might plant a bed to look 
just like a pig with one ear; or,to look very prettyiudeed, 
if some of the white Asters were in patches together, 
and the blue ones the same, and also some of each 
mixed, all in the same bed, it would be neither one 
thing nor the other, but a perfect mess ; yet, aRedlndian 
might think it the best bed in the garden. But if you 
put a patch of the dark blue in the centre, then a row of 
the white all round it; after that, alternate rows of blue 
and white, till the bed was full—any one could see that you 
had a system, and that you planted for an aim. Whether 
they approved your taste was of very little consequence, 
because, in one bed, which does not form part of a 
system, one man's taste is just as good as another. I 
must own, however, that in planting a bed in rows of 
white and black—dark blue having only the value of a 
black colour, when placed between two rings of white— 
we only show the lowest degree of taste—the beginning 
from confusion to the regularity of a system. The next 
step is to take the dark blue, white, and a flesh-coloured 
red, or a rose-colour ; or, indeed, any of the tints of red 
in China Asters. You will find, by placing out flowers 
together in damp sand, as for a nosegay, that double 
the quantity of red, or two rows of it, may be put to 
balance tho white row on one side, and the dark row on 
the other side. Make yourself sure of this by placing 
cut flowers for experiment, and if you agree with me, 
change one row of the red flowers, and put in lighter or 
darker red flowers instead. If the row is of a darker 
red than the first, place it next the white flowers; but 
if it is more pinky, or lighter red, place it next the dark 
blue flowers, or try the rows both ways, and see which 
way you would like best, and make up your mind to 
plant the way you think best. Now, take a quantity of 
light mottled gray, or between that and very light blue, 
which is very common in Asters; you will find that 
these must be kept well apart from the white flowers, 
and that less white will be needed in a bed. After that, 
try all the tints you can find, and try, also, how one, or 
two, or three rows of one kind will look, before you 
determine your choice. All this may be done with cut 
blooms and a plateful of damp sand in the day time. 
D. Beaton. 
Currants. —A letter from Athens states that the cur¬ 
rants appear to have escaped this year the disease which 
has preyed on them for the past three years. 
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