THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, July 7, 1807. 
213 
with all this planting and watering, the shows and the 
haymaking will be sure to get into a pickle by and by. 
Are the early Pompones and the young Chrysanthe¬ 
mums going on well, or have you been obliged to divide 
the old roots only ? Ten to one if they are not in the 
background, and out of sight, &c. But this is the last 
chance, and a capital chance it is to make lots of cut¬ 
tings of all kinds of Pompones, early as well as late 
kinds. Put “ three and three ” of them in thumb pots; 
put the pots in the front of a close pit (all pits are hot 
enough now), and in three weeks you may plant them 
out on a south border, fourteen or fifteen inches apart, 
without disturbing the balls. About the middle of July 
stop them to four or five buds from the bottom, and if 
the bottom eyes are picked out of the cuttings, as they 
always ought to be with the last batch, each of the 
three plants in each ball will put up at least three strong 
shoots, and those that come very weak should be rubbed 
off altogether. You will thus have from eight to a dozen 
flowering shoots from every ball, and nicer plants 
were never seen in Temple Gardens in London; but 
recollect there is not a day to be lost. 
Give me an order for 10,000 Moss Roses, Cabbage 
Roses, or yellow Roses, whether they be Austrian, English, 
Irish, or Scotch, or from the Southern States like Isa¬ 
bella Grey—the dear Isabella Grey from the States— 
and you shall have them all on their own roots, and all 
from cuttings made from the young wood that would be 
wasted by the budders in June and July. Eight years 
ago come next September one of the best Rose growers 
east of London made that same proposition to the 
writer, which brought on a conversation about striking 
Roses, when he affirmed that every Rose in this country, 
or in any other country, could be grown from cuttings 
with as much certainty as bedding plants at two seasons 
of the year—the very hard and difficult ones to be forced 
in January, and made cuttings of in February from the 
very young tops, and the great bulk of Roses at the 
turn of Midsummer. He also told me that he and all 
the great Pvose growers make a point of having a smart 
hotbed on purpose to save every morsel of wood from 
new Roses at the time of general budding, or else a good 
deal of it would be necessarily wasted. 
There are more than a thousand Roses on their own 
roots in the Experimental Garden ; and last Saturday I 
would have measured one enormous Rose of Baronne 
Preuost on a two-year old plant, only that I was almost 
sure that half my readers would not believe the size, 
although I always tell the truth, and nothing but the 
truth, as far as I know. The great madness and huge 
folly of growing dwarf Roses otherwise than on their 
own roots will take wing out of the Experimental, and 
fly off to the uttermost parts of the earth, and will never 
more be heard of but as a matter of history—-the history 
of fondling folly during the first half of the nineteenth 
century. Every Rose in the three kingdoms will now 
and for the next month come from layers just as easily 
and as soon, and some much sooner, than Carnations 
and Clove layers, and they will be fit to bed out “ by 
themselves ” towards the middle of October, and, with a 
few sheets of “ oil-skin ” or pieces of bladder, “ layers ” 
may be taken from all the standard Roses; and of all 
the substances' ever yet dreamed of for rooting layers in 
the air, the dust from the cocoa-nut fibre is the best and 
surest, as it possesses the quality of retaining moisture 
longer than any other substance known in the garden. 
From Roses to nosegays is but one step ; but to enjoy 
the comfort of a living nosegay in a cool drawing-room 
on a broiling hot day is a luxury known only to a very 
few of the drawing-room folks. But, first of all, what 
is a living nosegay? A well-balanced flower-bed. 
There never was a flower-bed yet which did not represent 
a nosegay; and I could tell a dairymaid’s nosegay out 
of fifty beds in a flower-garden, also the coachman’s 
button-hole and bridle nosegays, the dandy’s nosegay, 
and the nosegays of the dunce, the screw, the stripling, 
and the man of taste ; but, coming up that length, see 
my lady’s nosegay—a perfect representation of a perfect 
flower-bed, and a perfect flower-bed represents the new 
kind of summer nosegay which I am going to tell about 
■—the live nosegay. The first of them I ever saw was 
about this time last year. It was made by a French 
lady who visits the Experimental Garden and the late 
Queen of the French at Claremont. Like most of our 
great English ladies and the higher order of minds in 
France, she has a wonderfully good eye for colours and 
for artistic designs ; and, moreover, many of my readers 
are “ beholden ” to her, unbeknown to them, in the 
matter of flowers. When I saw the first of her living nose¬ 
gays, composed of the blue Nemophila, I was so taken 
with it that, were I the young Norval of a Scottish duke¬ 
dom, I should have proposed to her on the spot. The 
flowers of Nemophila come on curled-up spikes, circinate 
or scorpioid, like those of Forget-me-not, Eutoca, Borage, 
and the like, and all these kinds of flowers make the 
best living nosegays. You cut off the tops of the flower¬ 
ing shoots above the last expanded flower; the rest are 
in bud and curled up. Throw these tops into water, and 
they will continue to uncurl for a week or ton days 
as if they were still growing on the plant, the buds 
will open a few each day, turn up to the light, which 
causes the cut ends to turn down into the water or 
“right themselves,” and the whole surface of the water 
is alive with flowers jamming each other so closely 
that you would think they were made into a nosegay on 
purpose; and of all the modes of showing off cut flowers 
in the drawing-room this is by far the most beautiful. 
Suppose a half-pay officer in Bath to pick a handful of 
Forget-me-nots, cut off’ the tops, throw them into a cup 
of water, the next day they are in full bloom. He sends 
it to a dowager next door; and can she mistake his 
meaning? Not she, indeed. D. Beaton. 
OUR HARDY FRUITS AT MIDSUMMER. 
The end of June is, in my opinion, the most im¬ 
portant period in the whole summer as to the attention 
requisite with most of our out-door fruits, especially 
trained trees. By that period most of the young spray 
is fairly developed, and, indeed, in many cases, too much 
so. The embryo blossom-buds, or those disposed to 
become so, are in danger of being retarded in a most 
improper degree through the umbrageous matter by 
which they are in many cases crowded. It is absurd to 
imagine that tender fruits may remain in this smothered 
condition until the prime of summer has gone by with¬ 
out detriment to the blossom-buds. If such were the 
case all our advice about the importance of light in 
the organisation and perfecting of the future blossoms, 
would be in vain ; but it is not so. Depend on it that 
unobstructed light is as important to the foliage which 
emanates from spurs or buds convertible into blossom, 
as it is on the ordinary foliage of the tree or plant of 
such things as bear fruit rich in saccharine and other 
matters. Besides, on the score of decency alone, how 
pitiful it looks, after perambulating highly-kept orna¬ 
mental grounds, to step into the kitchen garden, and find 
at Midsummer the fruit trees all confusion, as though 
fruits were not worth consideration either as to quantity 
or quality; and perhaps, in addition, to hear the pro¬ 
prietor or cultivator lamenting the bad settiug or worth¬ 
less character of fruits considered respectable in other 
quarters. I must confess to as great a love of flowers 
as most persons; but, on behalf of the fruits, I really 
envy them the proud position they occupy at the present 
day. The proper cultivation of fruits is certainly more 
tedious, and perhaps more uncertain than that of flowers, 
