154 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, June 9, 1857. 
wish to imitate exhibition training. Inside this border 
is a walk four feet and a half wide all round, and cross- 
ways through the centre from south to north, and from 
east to west, with a circular bed in the centre for a 
beautiful specimen of the Norfolk Island Pine, Araucaria 
excelsa. 
Inside the walks round the house run the hot-water 
; pipes, partly below the level of the walks, and partly ten 
inches above them, with a wall behind the pipes a foot 
higher than the walks to keep up the sides of four 
conservatory-like beds of earth, one of which occupies 
just a quarter of the space. Over the pipes and this 
| side wall runs a level stage all round, which will hold 
two or three rows of pot plants in bloom as an edging 
between the outside walks and the huge beds in the 
centre ; and at each of the four corners, which corners 
are rounded off, rises an elegant stack of pipes five feet 
high. Each stack is composed of a double set of two-inch 
pipes for hot water, the outside circle of pipes having 
sixteen pipes, and fourteen in the inner circle, all fitted 
into a fiat, hollow, iron frame at top and bottom, each 
top forming a beautiful pedestal for some handsome 
specimen in a pot: four Palms occupy them just now— 
two Latania Borbonica aud two Sabal Blackburniana. 
The sides of the beds along the cross-walks are held 
up by grass turf a foot wide, the surface of the large beds 
being level, and uniformly one foot above the walks. 
The last Monday in April was a bitterly cold day, and all 
the ventilation was open when I arrived to let off the 
smell of paint; but, to show me how quickly this splendid 
edifice could be heated, Mr. Gruneberg ordered the cock 
to be turned, and in twenty minutes the temperature 
was quite comfortable, and in less than three quarters 
of an hour the pipes were sufficiently hot to raise the 
temperature of the vast area to a Pine-stove heat; but a 
young, active Frenchman who was in charge of the 
building opened the ventilators at the end of the twenty 
minutes, declaring in French that the boiler could keep 
the house hot enough if the roof wasoff, and that, without 
plenty of fresh air while the paint smelled so badly, the 
plants would be—no matter where. 
The way the heat is got up so quickly is this:—A four 
inch pipe is connected with the flow at the boiler, and 
is the lowest pipe all round the walks in the Winter 
Garden; there are four three-inch pipes, two and two, 
running over the first; also, the four stacks of pipes at 
the corners are over the whole. Now here is a move in 
the right direction, and directly against the grain of the 
old school. But after stating so many facts I shall go 
no farther to-day, and that will give “ young England'’ 
i an opportunity to explain his philosophy about heating 
with hot water; and if he gives me a better way than 
having the flow-pipe undermost I shall give him a 
whole chapter on the plants and planting of this Winter 
Garden ; also a new discovery by which Mr. Gruneberg 
has propagated 1000 Grape Vines, principally of the new 
Muscats, from one hundred eyes, siuce the beginning of 
last January. It is his own invention, and I have seen 
the plants. I also would engage to raise 1,500 good 
plants of Grape Vines from one hundred eyes in less 
than six months, while the rest of our British gardeners 
and nurserymen are content with one good plant from 
each eye of a Vine. D. Beaton. 
MR. CUTBUSH’S NURSERY, BARNET. 
In countries such as ours it is often difficult to decide, 
so far as locality is concerned, upon the requisites to 
success in any line of enterprise. Let a prudent, far- 
seeing man pitch his store in the back woods of the 
States, or the wilds of Canada, and ere long will be con¬ 
gregated around it a city of customers. The store, the 
mill, the church, and the school, and a good assemblage 
ot houses and farms must exist before the nurseryman 
could succeed, because for a long time he must depend 
chiefly on his neighbours as buyers. Similar prudential 
motives long kept our nurseries confined to the metropo¬ 
litan and a few of the other largest cities. The aristo¬ 
cracy and people of rank and wealth were considered the 
only class who could or would go to any expense in 
gratifying their taste for the beautiful in plants and 
flowers. Not until improved modes of transit and other 
changes brought out in bold relief the taste for refine¬ 
ment and the love of the beautiful existing and panting 
for development among the great masses of the people, 
did our nurserymen begin to act as if they felt that the 
home British empire was just a large extended town¬ 
ship. Hence in the vicinity of most market towns of 
any extent we now find a nurseryman, and not unfre- 
quently two or three, pursuing similar or different de¬ 
partments of the same business, and agreeing by the 
keenness of their competition in serving their customers 
economically aud well, even if at times, among them¬ 
selves, they exemplify the truth of the old adage about 
“ two of a trade” not fraternising too amiably. Some¬ 
times these enterprises turn out unsuccessfully; but 
though entailing much loss to the speculator, which is 
much to be deplored, the neighbouring community almost 
insensibly receive an unmixed advantage, as the sight 
of flowers and the practicability of possessing them ever 
leave their traces in more refined tastes and purer aspi¬ 
rations. The philanthropist and the moralist may well, 
therefore, wish success to the nurserymen as pioneers of 
progress. All nurserymen so situated in country towns 
would wish to be liberally supported in the neighbour¬ 
hood in which they live; but many, in addition to such 
patronage, contrive, by means of horticultural exhi¬ 
bitions and advertisements, to make their wares known 
to the whole community, thus extending their shop 
fronts from Land’s End to Johnny Groats. It is chiefly 
as an exhibitionist that Mr. Cutbush has made the 
Barnet Nursery known to the public. 
Though I had frequently passed the nursery in the 
days of coaches, I never was inside it until the loth 
of May. On entering and looking about for a short 
time, before I had seen Mr. Cutbush, I was especially 
struck by two facts. The first was the nicety, order, 
cleanliness, and good culture everywhere apparent. 
Dutch hoes were being plied vigorously amid quarters 
of Holly, &c., where scarcely anything in the shape of 
weeds was apparent; but the sun of such a day would 
soon settle the almost unseen seedlings, while the 
moving of the surface would act as a shading to the 
soil below in arresting evaporation. Mr. Cutbush told 
me he had found that “well kept” was synonymous to 
“ easy kept,” aud that a “ stitch in time saved nine.” 
What a contrast to having to use a scythe to prostrate 
giant Groundsel in full seed before customers could get 
a sight of Currant bushes ! And yet such things are to be 
seen, and people grumble when with such management 
they can hardly make two ends meet at settling day. 
Such slovenliness can exercise little of a beneficial in¬ 
fluence on a neighbourhood. So long as people choose 
to be gently led by example, instead of being driven by 
precept, an orderly, well-kept nursery is to the neigh¬ 
bourhood in which it is placed an ever-present incentive 
to industry and neatness, and a standing rebuke to sloth, 
carelessness, and weeds. Only think of the futility of a 
worthy clergyman descanting on Sunday on the im¬ 
portance of cleanliness as somewhat akin to godliness, 
whilst the listeners cannot hear him without having 
their Sabbath-day garments soiled with the filth and 
dust collected in the pews, or their attention distracted 
by the activity of the spiders in snaring their prey in 
their many webs, fixed in corners of the ceiling and 
windows. Need we be surprised that the cottage in its 
general aspects so much resembles the church or the 
chapel in its vicinity? 
