i June 20.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
171 
what Mr. Downing says of Blitliewood, the seat of R. 
Donaldson, Esq., near Barrytown, on the Hudson. 
“ The natural scenery here is no where surpassed in its 
enchanting union of softness and dignity—the river 
being four miles wide, its placid bosom broken only by 
islands and gleaming sails, and the horizon grandly 
i closing in with the tall blue summits of the distant 
lvaatskills. The gently varied lawn is studded with 
i groups and masses of fine forest and ornamental trees, 
beneath which are walks leading in easy curves to rustic 
i seats, or to openings affording most lovely prospects. 
As a pendant to this graceful landscape, there is within 
the grounds scenery of an opposite character, equally 
J wild and picturesque—a fine bold stream, fringed with 
| wooded banks, and dashing over several rocky cascades, 
| thirty or forty feet in height, aud falling altogether a 
i hundred feet in half a mile.” We need quote no more; 
! it is with such gigantic materials that the American 
landscape gardener has to compose, and we can assure 
| our readers that the results are correspondingly bold 
i and striking. But it is not for these alone that we re- 
! commend the book for perusal, but, on the contrary, 
because it is full of instructive lessons, profusely illus¬ 
trated, relative to the arrangement and management of 
tbe garden designer’s three grand elements of com¬ 
position—the ground—the water—and the wood. 
Our allotted space is filled, and we must postpone 
until next week the further examination of our “can¬ 
didates for honours.” 
THE ERUIT-GARDEN. 
[Absence from home prevented Mr. Errington pre¬ 
paring his observations for this department.] 
THE ELOWER-G ARDEN. 
Ei.oweu-beds. — Summer flower-beds, in masses of 
one colour, being made up chiefly with half-hardy plants 
and late spring-sown annuals, the plants are only just 
now beginning to feel their freedom, having got a good 
hold of the ground. The Verbenas, where they are 
extensively cultivated, are the first to show the care and 
success of the propagators, as they are first in bloom. 
It is provoking to see a white, a lilac, or a bluish flower 
opening in a bed which was to bo all scarlet, besides 
the comfortable assurance that the mischief does not 
end there, but must extend to other beds or borders, as 
Verbenas and most flower-garden plants are propagated 
and nursed in quantities together in one pot; so that 
one tally, or number stick, set-in in the wrong pot any 
time in the spring, will often throw thirty or forty 
plants of a wrong colour on the planter's hands; and 
the first symptom of any such derangement is looked to 
with a jealous eye. In all cases where gardening can 
he carried on systematically, ho who makes the cuttings 
should have the after-management of them until they 
are finally planted out in the flower-beds, so as to be 
fully responsible for the accuracy of the tallies, or, which 
is the same thing, the respective colours. But it so 
happens here, as if to prove the adage, that what one 
preaches he does not always practise, when I assist the 
propagator in making, or “ potting” off, cuttings when 
lie is very busy in the spring, all the consequences of 
misplaced tallies are sure to be laid to my charge for 
that season, or for that particular family of plants I may 
have had through my bands; and, to save my credit, the 
first wrong placed plants which show their bloom are 
sure to be pulled up, contrary to my orders; and this is 
what I want to impress on others—not to look to the 
“ credit ” of any one, but rather to look to the appearance 
of the flower-beds in the meantime; aud as accidents 
will happen among tallies with the most careful, and 
these accidents are sure to come to light sooner or later, 
by far the best plan will be not to pull up the wrong 
plants at this stage, though they may be an eyesore to 
the planter. What I insist on here, is to let such plants 
be stripped of their flowers as fast as they appear in bud, 
and the shoots stopped for two or three weeks longer; 
and by that time the neighbouring plants will have 
advanced sufficiently to cover the ground, and all mis¬ 
placed plants may then be safely rooted out without 
leaving gaps, as they would in the first instance. 
Pegging-down. —This trailing growth of the Verbenas 
brings me to the first stage of summer dressing the beds. 
All plants which trail on the ground, or grow sideways, 
like Verbenas, must be trained or tied down, to fill the 
more open spaces, so as to get the soil in the beds 
covered as soon as possible. This training in our forth¬ 
coming dictionary will be called '‘pegging," because, in 
former days, tbe training was effected with little hooked 
or forked pegs; but there are many ways of “ pegging ” 
without the use of pegs at all; and one of the simplest 
with Verbenas is to take hold of a flower truss in bud, 
make a hole with a stick, or with the two fore-fingers, 
and poke the truss down in it. The shoot is then held 
in the right position at once, and without knowing how 
the thing was done, no one could make out that the . 
shoot did not naturally grow in that position from the 
first. Unless the surface of the bed is very loose indeed 
there are many plants, such as Petunias, trailing Gera¬ 
niums, and the like, which may be trained after the same 
fashion, being kept in the right direction by means ot a 
leaf here and a leaf there buried in the soil. The foot¬ 
stalk of the leaf, like the flower-stalk of the Verbenas, 
being still attached to the plant, it holds down a shoot 
just like one holding a pig by one ear. This may be 
called tbe simplest, or cottage mode, of training. The 
next higher in the scale, is a plan of training invented 
some years since by one of our fashionable gardeners, 
and consists of doubling thin strips of matting, of four 
or five inch lengths, round the shoot, and then burying 
both ends of the matting in the soil. In large places, 
or where large quantities of training matting is required, 
the ends of the new mats bought in the autumn are 
reserved in little bundles for this purpose, when the i 
mats are being tied, and boys split the strings into the 
smallest threads, or shreds, on wet days; so that a \ 
trainer, with no more matting than he can hold in one 
hand, can fasten down some thousand shoots. ^ Another 
way is, to have bundles of short sticks, say of six-inch j 
lengths and as small as can be got, and stick them down 
slantways against the shoots and branches of many 
plants. Two such sticks so placed opposite each other, 
will have the parts above ground crossing one another, 
like the letter X, and form a very strong holdfast. The 
very tops of the fuchsia shoots might be put by for this 
purpose, as I suppose that no cottage gardener is so^ 
extravagant as to burn or east away his annual crop of 
fuchsia stalks, for they are the handiest things possible 
for staking many things ; and all the dressing they 
require is to cut them into the required lengths and 
sharpen one end. Then, at this dressing, thousands of 
little tops are discarded as useless; and a man is sent to 
the fields aud hedgos in the height of summer, for whole 
days, to look out “ pegs ” to do what the iuclisia tops 
would have done much better, unless one chooses rather : 
to work on the old plan of training “ by hooks and by 
crooks.” 
