THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, April 14, 1857. 
21 
CONCEALING A KITCHEN GARDEN. 
“ I am about raising an embankment at the end of my 
pleasure garden to shut out the sight of the kitchen garden, 
and I wish to plant some shrubs on the top of the mound. 
Will you please inform me what will be most ornamental ? 
I also wish to place a few specimen plants on the embank¬ 
ment; be good enough, also, to suggest the most desirable 
for this purpose. I may state that the bank rises about four 
feet, and is twenty to twenty-five feet deep, and about ninety 
to 100 feet long.”—H. P. 
[You propose doing a foolish thing, probably because such 
a foolish thing is commonly done. A bank across the end 
of a mere slip of ground to hide what is beyond is a bad 
proceeding. There was some excuse for the old farmers 
who planted their “ quick ” hedges on banks, such banks 
making part of the fence at once; but we want no fences to 
keep out Cabbages. These banks are ten times more 
offensive to good taste in gardening than Cabbages going to 
decay. Instead of raising the soil four feet we w r ould trench 
it four feet, and plant higher trees than yours by four feet; 
then the front would look like the front of a 'plantation if 
the depth was only ten feet; while your twenty to twenty- 
five-feet-deep bank will never look more than a belt to a 
stranger; but have your own way in making the face to 
the bank. Plant a row of Berberis aquifolia horizontally, 
at eighteen inches from the bottom, as they plant quick on 
banks; water well, and on the top of the bank plant a row 
composed of the same Berberis, golden leaved Hollies, and 
Aucuba Japonica in equal numbers. These will give the 
| same kind of effect as flowers do in front of evergreen 
clumps." Plant a row of common Laurels along the side 
next the kitchen garden to make sure of a thorough screen, 
and in front plant Hollies, Yews, and Portugal Laurels, 
with double-flowering Cherries, Pyrus spectabilis, Almonds, 
scarlet Horse Chestnut, or Pavia, Laburnum, and a few 
Birch. Along the centre and near the sides plant Laures- 
tinus, Rhododendrons, Bibes sanguineum, a few Lilacs, and 
Guelder Roses, and you will have a good mixture for use 
and ornament.] 
NEPENTHES RAFFLE SI AN A WITHOUT PITCHERS. 
“ I have had a Nepenthes Rafflesiana under my care these 
three years. It is about ten feet high, and in excellent 
health, but has no pitchers on it. I am told it is most 
likely to be a male plant, and will never have any pitchers 
on it. I shall feel greatly obliged if you will be so kind as 
to let me know if there is a male and female pitcher.”— 
John Reid. 
[All the Pitcher plants belonging to Nepenthes have one 
sex in a flower, and the male and female flowers are on dif¬ 
ferent plants; but that can have nothing to do with the 
pitchers, for those pitchers are natural appendages of the 
leaves, or rather, of the foliaceous petiole, which runs out 
beyond the point of the leaf in the shape of a tendril, formed 
by the union of the great ribs of the veins of the leaf. 
These leaves may be said to have two petioles, one before 
and one beyond the leaf, the latter ending in a pitcher. It 
has nothing to do with the sex of the plant. In the vege¬ 
table world a useful appendage is as necessary for the male 
as it is for the female. The flowers of these pitchers come on 
terminal racemes, or a sort of spike, very much like the 
spike or raceme of the common Rib Grass of our fields. 
It requires a very high, moist temperature.] 
DELPHINIUM FORMOSUM FAILURES. 
“ Having purchased a packet of Delphinium formosum seed 
nearly two weeks since, and inquired of the vendors when 
the seeds, if sown on receipt of the plants, would flower, 
they wrote, ‘ Push on part of the seed,’ which I have done in a 
moderate hotbed. The packet was 2s. 0d., and sealed, with a 
printed praise of the beauty of the flower; but to me the 
seed seemed not of a good ripe colour, and I think if the 
seed was new it ought to be coming up, but it is not. In 
your No'. 443, at pages 432, 433, inquiry is made about 
this Delphinium, and the reply is, ‘ One-year-old plants are 
to be planted in a bed this month or next.’ I fear I shall 
not have a flower from the seed I have bought, and I am 
most anxious to see this Delphinium in flower. I should be 
much indebted if you could find out where I could procure 
a few plants one year old of this Delphinium formosum , as 
there is yet time to plant them.”—M. Fitt. 
[Messrs. Henderson and Co., of the Wellington Road 
Nursery, first let out Delphinium formosum, but it was raised 
by some smaller craftsman in Norfolk. You may get the 
plants from them or other large nurserymen. The plants 
should be all of one size and strength, and such as will bloom 
equally through the end of summer and all the autumn. 
You are in good time yet. They will do a month hence out 
of nursery pots. It is very wrong to push or force any of 
the Delphinium family, and such plants cannot make bed¬ 
ding plants the first year.] 
TREATMENT OF LARGE TRANSPLANTED TREES. 
“ I have, within the last two months, transplanted some 
dozens of twenty-year-old trees, both deciduous and others, 
but, unfortunately, upon the common plan ; that is, without 
any preparation such as you recommend in the way of 
trenching, Ac. Will you kindly inform me whether it would 
be of any service to have trenches made round each tree, 
filled with soil that might entice the fibrous roots towards 
it; or would watering round the trees’ trunk, or at the 
roots’ circumference, in the manner you have described in 
your paper of March 17th, now avail anything? The trees 
were taken up with as much ball as could be secured round 
them, and the soil where the trees are at present is moist 
and flat.”—E. L. L. 
[All that is necessary to do under the circumstances is to 
take special care that the balls do not get dry during the 
first summer after planting. Balls to large transplanted 
trees very often do ten times more harm than good. They 
are placed in the midst of loose soil, into which water freely 
enters, and if they, or any of them, once get a little dry on the 
surface , the rain water and the water from ordinary water¬ 
ing will pass off from it into the loose soil just like water from 
a duck’s back, and one might give ten thousand gallons of 
water to a tree, and not one drop of the whole reach a single 
root of it. Balls are the safest in the hands of very expe¬ 
rienced men, if they have sufficient strength to attend to the 
trees afterwards: but depend upon it balls have been the 
cause of more deaths to trees than to soldiers.] 
GOOSEBERRY CATERPILLARS. 
The season is fast approaching when we shall again hear 
sad complaints of the ravages of these unwelcome visitors. 
Some of your correspondents recommend Hellebore, and 
some tan and other things for their cure or prevention, but j 
allow me to say I think soot better than either of them. I last 
year, in early spring, spread soot thickly over the ground 
immediately round and under the trees, and I had no 
caterpillars, but a more plentiful supply of fruit than I ever 
recollect before. If the ground has not been recently dug 
let it be lightened up with the hoe, and I think few of 
the grubs will escape. The price of soot here is one 
penny per gallon.—T. M. W. 
BOX EDGINGS FOR WALKS. 
Various plants are employed for edgings, such as Box, 
Thrift, Gentian ell a, some of the finer Grasses, Ac., but 
none is so durable or ornamental at all seasons of the year 
as Box , its greatest objection being that it is a great 
impoverisher of the soil, and that it affords shelter for 
vermin. Box is the most efficient and the prettiest 
plant that can be used for edging. The colour and form of 
its foliage, its docility as to height, width, and shape, the 
compactness of its branches, its durability as a plant, its 
