347 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COI 
Mignonette, seem to be tbe essential points for amateurs 
to adhere to for success ■with this tbe finest of our 
bedding plants. The Waltonian Case stood against the 
back wall breast high, or not quite so much—that might 
be 12 feet or 15 feet from the glass in front, and 7 feet 
or 8 feet from the slope of the roof. At that distance 
from the glass most gardeners dispense with shading over 
their cuttings so early in the season ; but the Waltonian 
was shaded there from ten till four every fine day, and 
it was a great deal drier-looking than some gardeners 
would like to see their cutting-frame. Yet all the 
cuttings (and it was quite full), looked as clean and 
healthy as any I ever saw. The cutting-pots stood on 
an inch depth of white sand. The thermometer was at 
80° at 2 p.m. on the 2nd of March. The house was 
abundantly aired, and no one was near it for hours 
previously. They do not seem to find the smallest 
trouble in managing the Case, or in turning out enormous 
numbers of cuttings from such a small space. The house 
in which it stands is down the garden a long way from 
the dwelling-house, so that ladies cannot run in and out 
of it as if it were attached to the living-rooms, to look at 
every turn of the glass, and do or undo shading, or 
giving air at every turn or run of a cloud across the sun 
as some people do; and it is my firm belief that it is 
by too much care, and too much precision, and attending 
to positive rules, instead of a give-and-take principle, 
that those who cannot manage Waltonians must act, and 
not on the evidence of their own senses, nor according 
to the turns of the weather. I passed the front door or 
back door of this garden twice every week for the last 
seven years, on my way to the Experimental, and some¬ 
times six times a-week, and I never saw a fuss made, or 
a running to see that all was right with the Waltonian 
the whole time. But such things are often very un¬ 
pleasant scenes in the framing grounds of great people 
in the country. 
The winter of 1859-60 did not hurt the self-sown seeds 
of the bedding Geraniums. I think I told of a lot of 
the seedlings being potted last May or June; at any rate, 
the plants look fine now in a range of cold pits. This 
is the great Bose garden of Surbiton, and every good 
new Bose is bought as soon as it is out. All kinds of 
stocks are used, and every bud of a new Bose is worked 
more like as for a nursery; but to this day I believe it 
is not quite decided who is the better budder of the two, 
Mrs. or Mr. Walton. Some of the Boses had a severe 
pinching this winter, but hardly any were killed, except 
two or three small plants of Tea Boses, and one or two 
large plants of the same as Madame Willermoz, and one 
of Adam. All the tender Noisettes on the walls are safe, 
and every walk and alley in the kitchen garden is lined 
with all the choicest Boses very much exposed; but the 
soil is light, and they are constantly planting and trans¬ 
planting Boses, selecting sorts, casting out second and 
third-rate kinds as soon as they are proved to be such, 
or when better sorts claim precedence. All this added 
to what we have heard and read of, go to the very root 
of the evil, and to the very fibres of the secret of growing 
choice Boses in our climate. Up with every individual 
plant of them early in November, as long as you live; 
and if you can spare it leave something in your will to 
pay for transplanting them for so many years after you 
are dead and gone. But begin at the end of September, 
and transplant all the young of all the plants which 
you will hear of as having suffered this last winter from 
frost—not one year or two seasons, but every year for 
ever, as is recommended for fruit trees on the miniature 
orchard system. Now I think of it, let me suggest a 
clause next autumn in the prospective week’s work by 
Mr. Keane, and in the retrospect of the last week’s 
doings of Mr. Fish, who has already put his seal, inci¬ 
dentally, to this clause in our bill of works. 
Magnolia, fuscata. —Concerning this plant, which is 
mentioned by W. Earley, at page 335, as a fine thing 
NTRY GENTLEMAN, Maech 12, 1861. 
to cover the back wall of a greenhouse, I well remember 
an instance of “ the breeze wafting a delightful fragrance ” 
from it, and from the conservatory up on the mount at 
Claremont, not far from Surbiton; that was in May, 
1831, when Mr. McIntosh took me to see round the 
place—say just thirty years since come next May. The 
plant was then in bloom, and of considerable size, and 
scented the air a long way from the house. The same 
plant is there now, and looks as fresh as any plant in 
Surrey. It blooms, and has bloomed every year since, 
and is never affected by insects of any kind; and I con¬ 
sider it now as the best plant for the back wall of a green¬ 
house or conservatory of all that we have yet recom¬ 
mended for such a place, and no one need say it does not 
live long enough. 
Speaking of Claremont reminds me that the best 
border in England, in 1831, on the geothermal style of 
cultivation, was to be seen there ; for I had that season 
seen the best and principal gardens in the country. 
And from that day to this the same border is and has 
been heated in this geothermal manner; but the heating 
of the soil is not as M. Naudin, of Paris, and some of my 
friends at home would have it—not by heating the bed 
from the bottom to keep the frost from the top !—but 
sideways, from the front wall of the hothouse the year 
round, the border being considerably higher outside than 
the source of heat inside the range of houses. Eight or 
nine years back I reported in The Cottage Gaedeneb 
a hedge of the different varieties of Thunbergia *alata, 
the Black-eyed-Susan plant, as growing on that border 
after the manner of Sweet Peas, and the seeds were 
ripening just as freely that way as Sweet Peas themselves; 
but, then, the geothermal, or bottom heat, offrom70° to 80° 
at thetroots throughout the summer was the whole secret 
of the thing; and I sincerely hope that the intellectual 
blunders of earnest men respecting our means and the 
ways of applying them will not cast a slur on one of the 
greatest improvements to which a branch of gardening 
is still open amongst us—that is, the summer supply of 
bottom heat in the open air, even if only indulged in 
as far as Captain Trevor Clarke has often done in 
Northamptonshire and recorded. 
The great English hybridiser has been in the ’habit 
for years of making substantial hotbeds in the open air 
early in the summer, and planting out his spare plants 
from the stove and greenhouse. His Cannas were noted 
for years as most splendid that way. But Cannas and 
Hedychiums were so heated by Mr. McIntosh on the 
geothermal border at Claremont thirty years back, and 
many more plants of like kinds ; but for the last twenty- 
five years, or since Mr. Mallison succeeded to the place, 
and since the Princess Victoria resided there and took 
a fancy to the plant, the geothermal border has chiefly 
been devoted to the growth of one of the finest bulbs of 
the creation—the Belladonna Lily, which is still a great 
favourite with Her Majesty, who receives great bouquets 
of it every autumn from Claremont, wherever the Court 
is residing. Perhaps Her Majesty may induce the Prince 
Consort to tell them all this at Kensington Gore, if, indeed, 
Mr. Eyles has forgotten the extent of geothermal culture 
he showed to me in the autumn of 1840 up at Chatsworth. 
But I must back to Claremont to say that I believe 
there is nothing to be seen in any part of Europe in 
its way so really and so regally splendid as the hundreds 
upon hundreds of that Belladonna Lily on the geothermal 
border aforesaid when they are all in bloom, as I often 
see them; and I cannot conceive the depth of the in¬ 
difference which seems to hang on the British mincl 
with respect to the most lovely and most enchantingly 
beautiful portion of the flower world, the production of 
bulbous “roots,” all as hardy, or very nearly so, as 
that Belladonna. But let us revive the geothermal spirit 
once more on a sound bottom, and shun the creed of 
the revivalist himself, and never once attempt to heat 
the value of a hand-light space of soil from the bottom 
