129 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
here. How this happens I am at a loss to know; for 
the destruction of seeds germinating and of buds in a 
similar stage is generally in proportion to the severity of 
the winter, especially if of a protracted character. 
Since writing the above nearly a week has elapsed, 
and in the interim we have had most genial showers, 
which were much wanted ; and the consequence is such 
a change in the appearance of things as I have not 
witnessed for some time, the rains being accompanied 
by much heat. The Apples are magnificent, Plums 
also, aud the Pears appear to be setting most liberally. 
All these things, however, are in these parts about three 
weeks behind the average of seasons, and this points 
unmistakably to the utility of retarding principles, 
which I have so frequently recommended as beneficial 
when skilfully carried out. R. Errington. 
SPRING FLOWERS AND BEDDING PLANTS. 
Str Edmund Head, the Governor of Canada, is ex¬ 
pected to be in London about the middle of June, 
accompanied by Lady Plead, and both of them have 
very extensive family connections at home, besides a 
vast strength in political ties, and, as all the relations of 
celebrated characters abroad read The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener, this would be a good opportunity for enlisting 
Sir Edmund and his lady in the new movement 
about spring flowers. They have the “run” of the 
best hunting ground in the world for such plants as are 
most appropriate for the English spring garden. 
When I was last at Dalhousie Castle, on the South 
Esk, not far from Edinburgh, in 1827, I saw a very 
long border there which was brimful of Canadian plants, 
which were sent home by the then Lady Dalhousie, who 
occupied the same exalted station for some years before 
then which is now filled by Lady Head. I lodged with 
two of the University students in Edinburgh at the 
time, from whom I learnt that it was apprehended in 
the class-room of Dr. Grahame that Lady Dalhousie’s 
contributions from Canada would swamp their Botanic 
Garden by the richness and rarity of the hardy collec¬ 
tion in the long border aforesaid. Just at that time 
Douglas returned from his first mission to the west 
coast of North America. He and Mr. Donn, the 
celebrated botanist, went down to Edinburgh in .1828, 
when the first GlarJda flowered in Europe, and Douglas, 
being a most perfect master of the art of “ setting off” 
new plants, soon turned the heads of the Scottish 
botanical students over the Rocky Mountains. All 
Europe soon followed, and kept up the excitement in 
favour of Douglas’s discoveries till the bedding-out 
system was fairly established both in England and 
Scotland, and this system unhappily put down the 
Douglasian mania as fast and fearlessly as that “ rage for 
the Horticultural Society’s plants ” had stemmed the 
tide of which Lady Dalhousie had opened the sluices. 
The bedding-out system seems now to be so un¬ 
alterably fixed in the heads and hearts of “ our people ” 
that we can find time to discuss the points and periods 
in the rise, progress, and decline of the “ flowers of our 
childhood” in the mixed borders. Were it not for 
Douglas’s plants and the bedding-out system coming 
upon us all at a time there is no doubt but our gar¬ 
deners by this time would be perfect masters and 
managers of the American Flora; whereas, if we were 
to own the truth, we could not lay our hands on three 
gardeners in the three kingdoms who could even tell the 
names of one quarter of the herbaceous plants and 
bulbs from our “ Canadian possessions” without taking 
botanical curiosities into the account. 
I think Lord Elgin gave prizes, a few years since, for 
the best collections of specimens, or of drawings of 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, June 2, 1857. 
specimens, of Canadian plants by native artists. At any 
rate, one of the successful candidates for Lord Elgin’s 
prizes, a “ Canadian beauty,” showed her collections of 
these drawings to your humble servant the year before 
last, and, although I had them more than a month, I 
could not make out one-half of them, and the best plant- 
men about London to whom I showed them were not 
a whit more knowing. Of course, if we had the book 
names we should all know them, or pretend we did, 
as we could talk enough about them ; but the local 
Canadian names alone were given, so we could do 
nothing better with them than look knowingly over 
them and suck our thumbs. 
Now, after this humiliating confession, and knowing 
that some of the finest spring flowers in the world come 
from North America, also the best hardy Ferns, may 1 
not say that the time has arrived for procuring or re¬ 
introducing a grand selection of American herbaceous 
plants, that our gardeners may have an opportunity of 
studying them practically, and by their practice make 
them as familiar to all the garden people as Crocuses, 
Daisies, and Polyanthuses? You may depend upon it 
every one of them is as easy to grow and keep as a 
Crocus when we shall learn and know how to do it. 
It was but the other day that I had to confess that I 
had not seen a Trillium worth looking at since 1881— 
they, too, are Canadians—but I might have seen the 
finest plant of them in Europe in this parish of 
Kingston, and I have just seen it; the kind is Trillium 
graridijlorum. When I saw it last week it had ninety- 
four full, open, large white flowers in one circular patch, 
which was thirty inches in diameter, and very probably 
the patch has not been disturbed for the last thirty or 
forty years ; but I shall find out the whole history of it. 
I could give the name of the place, which is full of 
exquisitatums, were it not that some ill-mannered people, 
far away in the country, would begin their bother by 
writing endless letters. I shall never forgive myself for 
the disagreeable bother I have occasioned to Mr. Walton 
by giving his address in connection with his Waltonian 
case. Mr. Jackson, sen., and Mr. Kidd, gardener to 
the Marquis of Breadalbane, saw that Trillium grancli- 
florum the same day. They also saw what I did not 
think could have been seen out of my sanctum con¬ 
servatory—twelve-years-old Geraniums in pots. I have 
maintained all along that every kind of bedding Gera¬ 
nium, whether greenhouse, scarlet, horseshoe, ivy-leaf, 
or variegated, will improve by age, and, although I 
have known higher heads in this fancy throw all such 
old plants in my “ teeth,” and call them derisively by 
my name, I shall never alter the tune against very old 
Geraniums-; but I had no idea that any one adopted 
the plan as a regular system with a whole collection of 
Pelargoniums — fancy, French, spotted, and bedding 
kinds—until we saw it that day in full play with an 
extensive selection of all these kinds. The dwarf pink 
ivy-leaf bedding Geranium, from seven to ten and twelve 
years old in 48 and 32-sized pots, and with stems as thick 
as the handle of an umbrella; Mangles’ Variegated, 
another of the very slender kinds, equally strong, and no 
one knows how old ; Globe Compactum, Salmon, Nose¬ 
gay, Commander-in-Chief, Cerise Unique, Reidii, Princess 
Alice, Punch, Cherry Cheek, Mrs. Vernon, the first of 
the new Nosegays, and all the rest of the leading kinds, 
with Tom Thumbs of the first season it came out, all 
with handles or low stems as big as a walking-stick, 
and more easy to keep over the winter every year as 
they get older. For when aged the whole can be so hard 
pruned in the head and at the roots, in the autumn, as 
to keep in small compass, like so many dried bulbs, 
which plants, when turned out at this season, will begin 
to flower from the first joint, and no heat, or cold, or 
drought will hinder them, and such as them, from “ fill¬ 
ing up ” at once; and, better still, no soil or situation is 
