398 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[September 26. 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
ALWAYS GAY. 
It is the usual aim of The Cottage Gardener, and a 
very good aim it is, to excite his pupils, even the humblest, 
to the cultivation of each dower in its perfection. But this 
endeavour has its disadvantages where space is small and 
appliances defective ; no cottagers, of any rank in life, can 
succeed in all flowers ; and if we choose two or three, some 
accident may cause failure in our endeavours, or, at the best, 
our hard-won treasures are out of bloom sometimes, and the 
beds are dull. My own fancy takes another line. I have no 
greenhouse, no better gardener than myself. I have no 
show plants, and take no prizes at our horticultural exhibi¬ 
tions. But the frequent remark of my friends is, that call 
when they will, except at Christmas, my garden is always 
yay. No empty beds, few vacant spaces; and if anyone 
would like to attempt the same and improve upon my plans, 
he or she is very welcome to know them. 
The time of all others when I like to be admired is in the 
early spring, when my wealthy neighbours, luxuriating in 
their conservatories, think it needful to let then* flower gar¬ 
den look like the Lybian desert. Mine is filled full in the 
autumn with all the early flowerers I can procure, suggested 
by your pages or otherwise ; the new ones I try first in my 
snug border under the house, at the foot of my myrtle and 
magnolia, both by the bye in full flower now. When they 
are gone by, I move almost all carefully away, and fill up 
the place with scarlet geraniums. 
The pride of my heart in June is my rose basket. It 
stands on the lawn, and is, in truth, a bed surrounded with 
wire-work, which is covered all round and over the handle 
with creeping roses (each shoot tied down, never twisted in 
and out, which would certainly kill it), and the inside filled 
with low standards. From the time the leaves appear it is 
very pretty. But why should it not be pretty sooner? The 
ground is filled with crocus roots, and round the outside is a 
circle of wind flowers ( Anemone hortensis). After these axe 
gone mignonette is sown for the autumn. 
Another bed is surrounded with a hare fence; here, there¬ 
fore, are the carnations. But those charming flowers are 
deficient in one thing, leaves of real green. My hare fence 
forms the support of a low hedge of French honeysuckles, 
which flower at the same time with the carnations, and are 
green and pretty all the year round. In the spring this bed 
is filled with flowers among the carnation plants, and with 
some autumn-sown annuals for May; and about this same 
merry month of May are sown patches of other annuals just 
tall enough to peep over the hedge in the autumn, while in 
the middle are planted three or four chrysanthemums. The 
routine, then, for this bed is, mixed flower's till July, then 
carnations surrounded by French honeysuckles, afterwards 
late annuals, concluding with cln-ysanthemums. 
On the law T n are several tree roses, which have the turf cut 
from them to the distance of a foot all round. These little 
beds contain each four successive flowers. Bound the edge 
a circle of some early bulbs— aconites, single snowdrops, hya¬ 
cinths, Van Thol tulips, or others. After these the roses 
open, and nothing more can be desired; but before they are 
all cut off, each stem is the support of some low creeper or 
toll flower; and round this, over and among the concealed 
bulbs, flourishes some gay little annual of a different colour, 
as portulaccas round a white petunia. One tree rose has 
round it a wreath of double primroses (white, crimson, sul¬ 
phur, and lilac) ; but as then' leaves appear again in the 
summer, instead of planting other things among them, I 
sow major convolvulus, and train them up strings fixed from 
the ground to the top of the stock to form a pyramid. The 
canary plant makes a pretty low hedge, supported on bent 
sticks round a purple petunia. If any one fears to injure the 
rose by drawing too much nourishment from its soil, I can 
only say that one of mine, an Altalaine dc Bourbon, has at 
least 230 flowers every year. 
Another bed is in the form of a Maltese cross, the centre 
of which forms a circular bed itself. In this centre is placed 
an (Enothera, macrocarpa, whose large sulphur flowers con¬ 
trast well with every thing. But the plant is invisible all the 
1 
! 
spring, so, round it is first a ring of crocuses for March, then 
hyacinths for April, then tulips for May, and lastly, an edge 
of pinks for June, while the (Enothera grows on all the time, 
and covers the territory of each as it fades away, till it opens 
its own large flowers with the inoffensive plants of the pink, j 
by way of border. The arm of the cross which is farthest i 
from the house, is filled with fuchsias, with a border of the \ 
blue and the white Campanula pumila in alternate masses. 
But amongst the fuchsias are sweet williams, which form a ] 
rich object earlier in the year, and are easily cut down when 
their taller successors claim attention. The opposite arm 
must be kept low, or it would hide the rest from the windows ; ! 
it has a border of pansies for May, and is then filled with 
verbenas, pegged down—white, scarlet, and purple. 
One side arm has an edge of ranunculuses; and while these 
are in flower, the plants of Salvia patens are spreading 
within, pegged down, deprived of their buds till the space is 
filled, and they are allowed to expand in all their loveliness. 
The opposite aim is bordered by anemones, and within them 
may be any other blue flower— Campanula carpatica, Lobelia 
ramosa, <fcc. 
The summer arrangement, then, is— yellow in the middle; 
two opposite, blues ; two opposite, reds, with variations. But 
in the early spring all the arms are full of mixed flowers 
and bulbs, and these are taken away as they fade ; the former 
divided and placed in reserve beds till the autumn; the 
latter, if the leaves are dead, stored away; if not, moved with 
as much earth as they choose to take with them, to a nice 
airy place out of sight. The Gcntianella alone, is too great 
a favourite, and too capricious to be moved about so readily ; 
but there is a bed of dwarf roses to which it forms an edging, 
and remains green and unobtrusive afterwards, beneath the 
blaze of its queen. Incognita. 
ALLOTMENT FARMING FOR OCTOBER. 
Business of the Season. —We need scarcely say that 
the cottager or allottees’ harvesting period is at hand—at the 
very door,—as to his various root crops ; for these arc the 
things wherewith to withstand the chance of a partial famine, 
should potatoes at any time fall away ; and no man can say 
that these things can never be worse than they have been. 
The unexpected virulence of the blight this season, when 
most persons flattered themselves it was progressively 
wearing away, is enough to alarm the most sanguine, and 
will have the effect of preventing a full amount of confidence 
in this root for may years. Still, we would bo among the last 
