314 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[August 22. 
sand must be added accordingly. Of course, turfy loam 
is the best, but such should have, been procured a 
twelvemonth or so previously; this will cause the turfy 
material to feed the plant better. Some cultivators use 
a good deal of soot in the soil; for strawberries are 
known to be partial to it. We would not, however, 
mix much with it, for its principles can be easily im¬ 
parted in the character of liquid-manure. It is, never¬ 
theless, esteemed good practice to place some soot in 
the bottom of the pots, over the drainage, in order to 
keep the earth-worm out. A good drainage must be 
insured, not, however, too much inorganic materials, as 
they are but of negative value ; dry lumpy manure and 
turfy matter blended answer well, placed over two or 
three hollow crocks. The soil should be tolerably dry, 
at least mellow, for potting; care must be taken to press 
it close in the act of filling the pot, the ball being placed 
immediately on the drainage before described. A good 
watering with a rosed pot will benefit them immediately 
they are placed in a permanent situation, which must 
be in the lightest and warmest part of the garden; and 
there is nothing better than a hard gravel or cinder 
bottom for them. Some persons object to plunging 
them ; we do not. They must, however, be plunged on 
or above the ordinary ground level, not below it; in 
fact, no water must for a moment be permitted to lodge 
beneath them. As soon as November arrives, some 
loose litter may be strewn over them, unless the wea¬ 
ther continues mild; and henceforward they should 
never be allowed to freeze, if it can be avoided. The 
British Queens, it may be mentioned, require particular 
protection; a very little hard weather will injure them. 
R. Errington. 
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. 
Light-soiled Flower-gardens. — From the begin¬ 
ning of August to about the middle of September first- 
rate flower-gardens, on light soils and on high dry 
situations, are generally more rich and ga,y than at any 
other period of the season; while such as are situated 
either in low damp situations, or on rich heavy land, 
with a damp bottom, are past their best by the end of 
July, or, at any rate, after the first fortnight in August. 
Therefore, flower-beds should be made very differently 
for these different situations. To make the best of a 
flower-garden, there is as much judgment necessary for 
the preparation of the beds in winter as there is in 
planting them and in keeping them up to the mark in 
summer—perhaps more so ; for no matter what plants 
we use for gay flowering, unless the compost in which 
we grow them is suitable, not for the plants only, but 
for making the most of them in a given locality, we shall 
be baffled. Some people go so far as to insist on it that 
you can grow all kinds of flower-garden plants, with 
equal success, in every kind of situation where such 
things are likely to be wanted in tliis country ; but this 
is a most absurd and erroneous fancy, and a fancy, too, 
which could only get hold of the brains of a set of easy- 
minded people, who have passed the greater part of 
their lives and matured their observations in one given 
locality. 
They say “ a rolling stone does not gather moss; ” 
and, on the same principle, a rolling gardener, or one 
who has been shifting about up and down the country, 
will hardly increase in prejudice. The sharp angles on 
the organs of his perceptiveness have been worn down, 
so as to suit themselves easily to such things as he un¬ 
dertakes, no matter where. When he comes to lay out 
a flower-garden on the side of a dry chalky hill, he 
makes the beds as deep again as he would think it ne¬ 
cessary for them in the bottom of the valley. The com¬ 
post to fill them, too, he would use stronger and richer 
on the chalk, sand, or gravel, than would be useful on , 
clays and rich damp land. Yet, after all has been done ! 
that good gardening and sound judgment could suggest, 
the best of us may be defeated in many situations. 
I had a letter the other day from one of the very best 
gax-deners in England—if not the very best; he has in i 
bis charge one of the largest garden establishments in 
the country, yet, he says, he reads The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener every week with pleasure and profit—“his very 
teeth water at some of the lists of bedding plants which 
I have set forth from time to time.” Some of the plants, 
owing to his locality, he cannot get to pay the expense 
of their propagation; he, too, expects soon to see a 
white flowering variety of the scarlet geranium; but 
he cuts his letter short in the middle of the sheet with 
this reflection, “ What is the use of such anticipations? 
our muffy, murky atmosphere will never allow me to 1 
shine, like you, in the autumn. No sooner do the nights 
lengthen perceptibly in August than the fogs and va¬ 
pours rise from the lakes, and envelope the gardens and 
surrounding country, and they, with the natural heat of 
the season, set every plant and bed growing so unna¬ 
turally, as that they produce only a crop of rank foliage; 
and this, I suppose, must be our fate to the end of the t 
chapter.” He then turns round with a spark of conso¬ 
lation—for Nature is always kind, and will never leave 
us in despair—and remarks, “ but we beat you out and 
out in May and June, if not even in July.” True enough, < 
master. We have all of us heard of “ beating the globe,” i 
but it remained for the schoolboy to “ break it,” when i 
he let it fall from the stand in the lecture room. You j 
may beat us any month in the year when we have our I 
great folks from home, but “in May and June, and even ' 
in July,” if we needed a fine display, I am not quite sure | 
that you could have the success of the schoolboy, if 
“ even” you could “ beat us.” 
1 once planted a piece of sloping ground with a selec¬ 
tion of trees and shrubs, an arboretum in short, and 
from every pit or tree I bad to cut a trench, or drain, to 
take off the water to an open ditch on the lower side; 
the clay was perfectly waterproof, and would hold it like 
a china bowl. Yet in that locality, and on the same kind 
of land, we could keep the flower-beds tolerably well till 
the middle or end of September, because the air was 
dry and no water or flat valley near to us. The flower¬ 
beds were from twenty inches to two feet deep, and filled 
up with rough coal ashes to within ten inches of the t 
top, that being the best arrangement 1 ever found out i 
to prevent plants “going into leaf” too much in the 
autumn. Now, hear the other side of the question. 
About six or seven years back, after having been well 
nigh “ beaten ” with some flower-beds here, 1 got into a 
fit of experimental gardening, turned a new leaf in the 
flower-garden, and before I received my “ account for 
hauling,” there were two hundred and eighty-three two- 
horse loads of rank clay put down against me ; whether 
or not I really received so many loads is more than I 
now can say—I had enough and none to spare—every j 
spadeful of which had been put into one flower-garden— ! 
“ The Fountain Garden.” This garden is nearly a circle, I 
with a fountain in the centre, and on one side of it a j 
grass terrace, six feet higher than the garden, passes, : 
and from this terrace every bed and plant in the garden i 
can be seen at one view; all the beds are on grass, and i 
the greatest distance between any two of them is not 
more than four feet; the beds number 152 in all, and 
they were dug out, or rather cut out, off a solid bed of 
chalk. To make up for this dry bottom, the beds were 
made from three to four feet deep; but in practice, we 
soon discovered that something more than depth was | 
necessary for the full development of a good flower- ’ 
garden. In a dry season, the chalk sides and bottom of 
these beds actually sucked out the moisture in the soil, 
and left our plants in a powdery compost, that must 
