THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 23, 1860. 
Verbenas, tip to five feet high against a seven-feet stone 
wall. The plants were twice lifted in the preceding October; 
but at that early period in their history many Verbenas 
were kept in pots, just as we now keep Geraniums of 
gor t s _that is, from year to year, and after a hard, close 
ball had been made that way, sufficiently hard to stand 
anything, the entire ball would be planted out without 
disturbing it. Then, at the end of the season, it was no 
more difficult to remove one of these plants and balls 
from the border to a pot than from one pot to another. 
Now, however, a better order of things prevails for 
bedders ; and to remove a strong-growing Verbena from 
a flower-bed at the end of the season is about one of the 
most hopeless things to which a man can set his hands. 
But the change in the season has made a wide difference 
for the doing of many things not usually met with in 
practice, and in no one thing more than in the lifting of old 
bedding plants of sorts in October and November. One 
good reason for doing a thing is better than ten lame 
excuses for not doing that same thing: then, if ten cripples 
hobble along to oppose my way to Drummond Castle, in 
Scotland—the best flower-garden castle on the north 
side of the Firth of Forth—I shall hand them over to 
some Sandy McFarlen to be dipped in Loch Leven to 
cure them of lame excuses for the rest of their days, 
and I shall proceed on to the Castle. 
When I was in the height of the fashion, all the visitors 
from Scotland, or from a tour through it and over it, 
pressed the fancy works done at Drummond Castle into 
the fashions for that month or season, as the case might 
be, and no castle was ever castellated in one’s ears like 
Drummond Castle. And so it was, and went on till one 
season—I think it was the very dry and very hot summer 
of 1846—a lady told me the best thing in the flower way 
then in this island was the Verbena-covered wall or walls 
at Drummond Castle (there are many walls in that gar¬ 
den—terrace walls—some very high, some not quite so 
high, and some high enough to be covered with Verbenas 
in full bloom and as close as Ivy), and a good deal more 
of it, and how it was done and could be accomplished, 
and ever so much about it. The upshot of it was that I 
should become one of the garden correspondents of 
Drummond Castle. I did, and we exchanged fancies 
and fairy tales. But what I was going to tell you 
was about that decree for taking up the largest of the 
Defiances, the Mrs. Woodroofs, and such genuine out- 
stretchers, to do the thing which was so much talked 
about at that time as being the fancy fashion in one of 
the best flower gardens then in Scotland. They are up, 
and potted now, and standing behind that pit, with long 
rails or boards leaning over them, and mats at hand to 
throw over all on clear nights or on frosty evenings ; and 
so they will be, and be more to the purpose till the 
thermometer drops to 25° on the scale, if it were not to 
Christmas-eve. 
There is no other way one-half so good as that for 
getting large, half-hardy, succulent, softwooded plants 
to change from the free ground to the confinement of a 
pot or box with less risk and more chances of success. 
Keep such plants after potting them out of all kinds of 
pits and frames, cold, warm, or medium, from everything 
called a plant-house, or back shed, or potting-bench, and 
you will do well and never repent it. Dahlias would 
move like anything, and more easy than most things, if 
they were done like those Verbenas, and bloom on till 
hard upon Christmas ; and if you want a card for that, 
Mr. Moss did the thing over and over again at another 
castle never famed for flowers, but always spoken of for 
the terrace Aloes and the Dahlias in pots when others 
had theirs in the cellars—that was Eastnor Castle, at the 
other end of the Malvern Hills, in Herefordshire. Huge 
Salvia splendens have been done the same and many 
others ; and this very month I have taken up two Salvias 
which were sent to me in the spring from the Messrs. 
Low, of Clapton—one alba coerulea, which has shown no 
sign of bloom, and one cacalisefolia coming into bloom 
with branched upright spikes of blue flowers. 
By keeping the sun from such large plants when they 
are lifted in the autumn, and giving them all the light 
and freedom of open air and an out-of-door protection 
for a while, they will establish themselves much sooner 
than by any other means known to us. But settle the 
point to your own satisfaction, and I shall settle the use 
of it. Pot two Pompones from the border any time this 
autumn, or two anything like them you might wish in 
preference, and put one of the plants under cover, as in a 
greenhouse, or orchard-house, or vinery, or Peach-house, 
at rest, and leave the other out of doors and behind some¬ 
thing not much higher than itself, only that it keeps off 
the sun when we see it, and my word for it you will find 
the out-door plant the best of the two, and the soonest 
established in the pot. Recollect, however, this does not 
apply to all kinds of plants, only to such as are very 
strong, soft-wooded, and with large leaves ; also such as 
are very difficult to get established into pots, as Verbenas 
and Heliotropiums. I took up a third Salvia at the same 
time as the two just mentioned, and put it under glass 
immediately—that was Salvia tricolor of the “ Illustrated 
Bouquet,” which was sent with the rest from the Clapton 
Nursery. It made a most beautiful little bush, and shows 
the very best habit of all the family of the half-hardy 
race, but did not bloom. At first, and from the published 
figure of it, I took it for a variation of Salvia chamie- 
dryoides ; but after a couple of months in the free soil of 
the open border, no two plants were ever less alike one 
another than Salvia tricolor aud Salvia chamtcdryoides. 
But both of them are so hard and wiry in their growth, 
and so small in their leaves, that they would lose time 
if they were left out of doors after potting from the 
borders, like the great growers and the most difficult 
removers. 
So much for that part of the play. The next turn will 
show that we have not experienced such another season 
for the last five aud twenty years for the safe removal 
of old Verbenas from the beds ; aud although I am only 
going to adopt an old fashion, as all the people of fashion 
do at the intervals of so many years, others will find to 
their cost, and some have found it already, that they 
must adopt my plan, from sheer necessity. What is to 
me a mere fancy trick, is to them, and such as they are 
now placed, a matter of life or death. Half the cuttings 
of Verbenas, after being struck, have been lost or all but 
lost by the slug. Some of the kinds did not strike kindly ; 
and some, which did seem to carry along with them the 
nature of the parent plants, under great difficulties. They, 
the parent plants, would not do, and could not grow in very 
many places; and the cuttings from them have inherited 
the plague and misfortune, and tens of thousands of them 
will be lost this winter in the face of all the science and 
practical skill of the age. Mark my words well; I am 
old enough to know how the tune is going, and I know 
the kind of “ oil ” to keep the instruments from taking 
fire, from creaking, and from giving false measures and 
shortcomings. Do as I do, therefore, but do it for a very 
different purpose, and to make both ends meet at the end 
of next March. If you have lost so many of your Purple 
King cuttings, as some of the Londoners have done, or 
your Queens, Emperors, Stars, and Blue Bonnets, you 
are still on the safe side of the ferry. Do as I do, but do 
it to keep people from quizzing you on your bad luck. 
Take up so many of the old plants of all the sorts in 
jeopardy—they, or the like of them, were not in such a 
good condition for lifting for the last quarter of a century ; 
and if you do them just as I say, and keep them out of 
those cold or hot pits of gardening as long as possible, 
you will find no more bother with them than with young 
Tom Thumbs. 
The reason why Verbenas and other old plants in beds 
are so much easier to lift this season is this—their roots 
have never made such slow progress in the soil as they 
