45 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, October 23 , 1860 . 
^lave done this season, and, consequently, there is not the 
tenth part of the risk in lifting them as is usually felt. 
Indeed, I have seen cases lately in which the plants are 
in a much better state for potting than when they were 
planted out last May. But I have cases in point. I 
received in the spring a large assortment of Verbenas, 
two or three of a kind, to make up an arrangement of 
colours as they were classed in The Cottage Gardener 
at the time; also three dozen of nice plants of Verbena 
melindris, for the edging of a mixed row of variegated 
Alyssum, Lobelia speciosa, and Verbena melindris, an 
edging of which I had heard much, and of which I anti¬ 
cipate as much more. As soon in September as I per¬ 
ceived that nothing could be learned from all these, 
instead of bothering with cuttings of the different sorts, 
I ordered the old plants to be all potted, and to be kept 
over till the spring, and to do them so healthily as could 
be done, so as to get sound cuttings from them early in 
the spring to make another start. Well, all these were 
lifted, potted, and managed in the shade in the open 
air, just as I have suggested above, and now you never 
saw a more healthy or a more bushy lot of Verbenas 
than they are. The lifting of these, and the style of 
their looks and new roots in the ball, opened my 
eyes and suggested the far-fancy from Drummond 
Castle, or something that way; and if it should go no 
farther than to gratify a mere curiosity, it will teach a 
useful lesson. And, although we have all of us in The 
Cottage Gardener set our faces against the system of 
lifting such things in the autumn instead of making 
cuttings from them, you now see there may be occasions 
and fancies for which the plan is useful after all; but 
j sheer necessity will make it imperative in many places 
i this season, and we must not lose sight of the fact that 
the thing can be done if we go the right way about it. 
Just look at my own fancy—a score of old Verbenas of 
the Robinson’s Defiance potted in 48-sized pots, trimmed 
of side-shoots, or the side-shoots spurred into one joint 
from the main stem, and that stem tied upright to a 
neat stake. Why, the whole thing will not take up more 
room than the pot would need with a little Tom Thumb 
in it. 
No plant under glass is more easy to keep than an old 
Defiance, provided you keep it as cool and as damp as a 
Bedding Calceolaria, so that neither fly nor red spider can 
get a suck at it the whole winter long. Look at it again 
in March after lots and lots of the best cuttings under the 
sun are made from it; you have only to turn it out of the 
pot into a cradle-bed at the back of the Calceolarias, and 
Ren think of cutting a dash with them next season and 
for ever so many seasons in succession, in some way or 
other that is out of the common, and people will take you 
for another Solomon. Suppose you were to plant them 
at two feet apart in front of the greenhouse, and train 
them against the wall like Currant bushes are against 
the walls in the kitchen garden, no one could say but that 
svas a good hit. Or, if you put some of them round a 
mstic basket, and nail the long trailing shoots to the 
jutside of the basket at once, and let the rest of the 
ieason’s growth take its own way, no wind could blow 
hem out of place, and no one could say another such 
fight was ever seen. But do them your own way, and 
hen you cannot overdo them. 
When the Shrubland Rose Petunia was young and not 
nuch about, I used to have it over four feet high, and 
ipread and trained against a low terrace wall, where 
werybody was in raptures with it; and I am satisfied 
hat was one of the good reasons why it got about so soon 
>ver the three kingdoms. But it is done for now. The 
lew one called Lady Emily Peel, and which is nowadver- 
ised by the Messrs. Henderson, of the Wellington Road 
Nursery, is the best of that race. I saw several large 
ilants of it in bloom when I went to see the bedding 
fillips last spring, and there can be no mistake about it. 
lut, forgive me for the thought, I wished it were at 
Jerusalem, or further on in that direction, for eclipsing 
my favourite of all my seedlings and the pride of my 
stud; but so it is, and such is human nature when we 
come to seifs. 
Talking about Petunias, they say there were none this 
season ; but here at Surbiton thousands have seen a most 
abundant bloom of a good, common, purple kind of 
Petunia, which was thickly trained over the bars of a 
balcony facing the railway, at the Railway Hotel—nothing 
of the kind was ever clone better. Over the Petunias 
were six or seven hanging-baskets for Tom Thumbs and 
Calceolarias, and behind the Petunias a bank of mixed 
plants in full bloom the whole summer. The piace is 
much sheltered, and is open to the full sun. Now, those 
old Verbenas would have been just the thing for such a 
place. One might plant them in long, narrow boxes, and 
so train them over the bars of a balcony as to make a 
hedge at once as bright as the tail of a comet, and so thick 
that a robin could not face it or get through it anyhow. 
Heliotropes in time come to be as tall as pillar Roses, 
and they, too, might very well be thus managed and used, 
and now is the time to begin that part of the game. They 
are, however, the very worst plants in the garden to lift, 
their long dark-looking roots are as free from fibres as 
fiddle-strings, and as difficult almost to break into small 
fibry roots as strands of copper wire. Still, although I 
have not tried them this season, I should think they are 
as far back in the roots as Verbenas, and good beginnings 
could be made with them if they can be at all moved 
from the open ground. 
But, to tell the truth, necessity is at the very bottom 
of all this, and necessity is the mother of more things 
than inventions. There is no invention about all this talk, 
and yet it comes of necessity ; for I quite forgot, till the 
last Cottage Gardener came in, that this was the last 
day and the last hour at which I could write for the next 
issue. I thought I should come out next year with a new 
fancy, that none of them over the borders had heard of the 
Verbena walls at Drummond Castle, and that Kensington 
Gore could not show the beat of it. But having gone so 
far, I may as well make a clean breast of it, and tell that 
“ how ” for the last three weeks I had been employed, at 
all the spare moments I could catch, on an entirely new 
scheme, and such a scheme as I never heard of before ; 
indeed, some would call it an invention, but all I can say 
is, that it came of necessity. 
Well, 1 had very hard upon so many thousand seed¬ 
lings this season, and not one of which had showed a 
single bloom, or a double one either, till about or after 
the middle of September; but the turn to sun and dry 
weather on the 1st of October set scores of them up in 
bloom-bud like Tulips after a rainbow, and what was to 
be done ? There was no chance of seeing one of these 
open this autumn out of doors ; it was against the grain 
to be compelled to winter so many after being up so far 
to the point of proof already. Snow was reported from 
the north, and the evenings were chilly cold. Then it 
struck me all at once to do the flower-showing ones on the 
very plan about old Verbenas ; and of all the things I 
ever took on the spur of the moment, this has paid, and 
will pay me the best. Grand discoveries are coming in 
every day, I shall get all the “ shows ” to open bloom, and 
prove them after all. First of all I went over those that 
were showing for bloom, and cut off all the side-shoots to 
one joint before lifting them, then cut off all their bottom 
leaves, and all the old leaves near the top, and leaving 
half a dozen, more or less, of the young leaves near the 
top. Young leaves, in all kinds of plants, being only 
about one-fourth so stressing on the roots as old leaves. 
Then with a steel fork I lifted their roots with little hurt, 
potted the plants in all-but-leaf-mould-like compost, and 
after that the same treatment as above with Verbenas; 
but as soon as the leaves could stand firmly up, the pots 
were removed under glass, and the result is the gratifying 
news of a prosperous issue. D. Beaton. 
