THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, January 8, 1861. 
205 
learn energy fir9t, and then stick to it; and if you do 
you will get your reward—we shall all trust you with 
education, which, with your energy, will make a man of 
you at last. 
Now, to practise as we preach, or what is said, we 
shall have more frost this winter to guard against, and 
more plants and cold weather in the spring: recollect, 
therefore, that my way of treating my seedlings may lead 
you astray, unless you understand the circumstances 
which rendered my practice safe. Unless your pits or 
frames are as dry as mine, you will be in great danger if 
you keep them so long from air and in the dark as I have 
done. The long confinement in a damp state, or any 
state approaching damp, will be more against them than 
the want of light. But give your pits as much air and 
as often as the cold will permit; and do not water the 
pots, no matter how dry they may be, till you are sure 
of dry weather, and you will be safe. Every time you 
open the glass search after any damped leaves and pick 
them off; for if any part of the plants gets mouldy the 
next frost will be worse for them than the first, though it 
may not be nearly so severe. When a pit gets so damp 
as to threaten harm to all within it in such a trying 
season as this, the only way to stop the damp entirely is 
by artificial heat; and the best form of applying it in 
such cases, where neither flues nor pipes are in use, is by 
burning embers of wood, or with charcoal in some open 
vessel. I have seen an old watering-pot used in this 
way, suspended from the middle rafter of a four-light 
pit. It was half filled with burning embers from the 
greenhouse fire, and lasted hot several hours ; and in two 
or three days the inside of the pit was sufficiently dried 
to stop all appearance of damp for the rest of that winter. 
Nothing is more simple or better for the purpose than 
this, and nothing is more likely to be at hand than an old 
watering-pot past use : but have an inch of cold dry 
ashes under the fire to keep the soldering of the bottom 
from melting; that on the side of the pot will do no harm 
even if it melts. 
Nearly all the contrivances you may have heard of for 
helping to keep a pit warm on very cold nights are worse 
than useless—I mean such as jars full of hot water and 
the like; for unless a little air is left on at the back end 
of the lights the whole time, to let off the vapour which 
the extra heat is sure to raise where there is damp earth, 
you will only cause the plants to grow the more, and so 
make them the less able to stand the next frost. Nothing 
is so good for really cold pits as a thorough covering. 
For soft-bedding plants in greenhouses, or pits with 
flues or pipes, there is a very common error in not 
lighting the fires on fine frosty days till after the place is 
shut up for the day, or till the air is taken off. This is 
just what causes the fly to be troublesome in the spring. 
The plants are, in a degree, thus forced the whole winter, 
if it is hard, and fine leaves and soft tops are obtained to 
no other purpose than to furnish early food for vermin. 
All the fires ought to be lighted early in the afternoon in 
frosty weather, and the pipes or flues ought to be so hot 
as to do the work that night before the air is taken off, 
and after that to be kept up to that heat, and no more 
till next day. The expense for coals need not be greater 
by this better practice, and if it were, the more firmness 
and the better ripening of the young wood in the spring, 
and the less liability of the plants to the attacks of insects 
would make up for the difference. 
The whole winter management for bedding plants 
should be to give them as little artificial heat as will 
keep the frost from them and no more, and just as little 
watering as will keep them from actually drying up at 
the roots. 
The plan which is forced on me by the position of my 
house for plants, by which they are too often warmer at 
night than in the daytime, may be useful for a few who 
may have to keep their plants in kitchens or anywhere 
about the dwelling-house; but, as a rule, the practice 
ought to be avoided as much as possible. The way that 
I manage to balance the practice with Nature, is to keep 
such plants much drier than usual. When a plant is dry 
at the roots, a little extra heat even at the wrong time will 
not cause it to grow so much as another which is regularly 
watered, if it gets more day heat than is just sufficient to 
keep off the frost. Or in a more easily-to-be-remembered 
maxim, every inch of growth made by such plants during 
a hard winter by artificial codling, is for the fly and not 
for us. If we kept this in mind we should be more 
cautious in using the means which induce growth at such 
seasons and act accordingly. In my young days, the 
pride of gardeners, or of most of them, was to have their 
plants as fresh looking after a long winter as they should 
have been in summer; but their summer growths then 
were such as would make us now blush. But there is 
another point of view from which this question might,, 
probably, be discussed. In the olden times many plants 
were found to be hard to strike from cuttings, to be very 
difficult to rear if they did root, and in a few years to 
“ ruu out ” altogether, and be lost to that collection. The 
reason of that was mainly owing to the winter manage¬ 
ment, the growth was not after Nature, the cuttings had 
no heart or stamina to stand the propagation, and the 
plants which did root had to go another stage on the 
wrong journey. The cuttings from them were less 
hearty than the last, and in the process of time the “ run 
out” period overtook them and away they went. These 
old tales are not yet quite told out. We occasionally 
hear of very easy plants to do not doing at all, and if 
they grow they are constantly attacked by all sorts of 
insects. No cuttings from them ever make good plants, 
and in a few years they are clean gone; but the basis of 
the evil, the bad winter management, is too deeply rooted 
to be seen through without long practice and observation. 
D. Beaton. 
A MODEL SUBURBAN GARDEN. 
Having benefited much by reading The Cottage Gardener, 
I have sometimes thought it might not be uninteresting to some 
of your readers to learn how far the principles you advocate 
may be successfully applied and carried out in a small garden. 
I believe that amongst the numerous readers there are many 
who, like myself, love gardening for its own sake, following it 
not for profit, but from a taste for flowers, &c.; but who at the 
same time like to see some return for the time and money they 
expend. 
If they can learn anything from the details of my experience 
I should feel gratified. My garden, a small suburban one, where 
land is very dear, is 150 feet long by 40 feet broad, running from 
north to south, or slightly inclining to S.S.E. Walled on the 
north and west, and divided from my neighbour’s on the east by 
the gable of a house and espalier palings ; a hedge is the south 
boundary. 
A narrow border, used principally for striking cuttings and 
raising seedlings, runs by the east wall, and a walk 3 feet wide 
goes round on one side not exactly parallel with the fence, but 
forming a long angle feet broad at the widest end. It is laid 
out thus:—The plot under the wall facing south (allowing for the 
walk), the width of the garden and 30 feet long, is appropriated 
to vegetables. 
The next plot, about 40 feet long, is in flowers. Another, 
30 feet long, in vegetables. The remainder in fruit. 
I will take the portion for flowers first. It is laid out in 
three beds 20 feet long by 4 feet wide, with a border surrounding. 
The walks between the beds 2 feet wide. 
The borders on the north, east, and west are filled with 
herbaceous plants, bulbs, and annuals, care being taken to grow 
only good ones, and those I like. The south border contain®, 
about twelve tall or standard Roses and thirty dwarfs. 
I dispose of the three beds thus :—Two always in spring in 
Pansies, planted one foot apart each way. In June, between each 
row, I run up in one bed German Stocks, in the other Asters. 
By the time the Pansies are done blooming, the annuals are in 
perfection, or approaching to it. 
The other bed is planted in February with Ranunculuses; 
and when their beauty is over, the bed is filled up with Scai-let 
