292 THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY 
If it be true that “there is a medium in all things,” 
a middle course, here is the place for it in gardening. 
On good ground and in all low situations in the country 
the gardener plants out his bedding plants wider apart 
than is done in dry situations, in order that they may 
have more room to grow out “their pride” before the 
autumn, when they are expected to be one blaze ol 
bloom. This, however, is not a “medium,” but only 
one end of a story. Well, the other end is in London ; 
and here, on the stiff clays of Middlesex, or on the low 
grounds on either side of London or of the Thames, if 
gardeners plant the beds as they would do and should 
do in the country in similar situations, they would 
hardly have a fair bloom or covered surface till the 
London season was over; and, on the other hand, if 
they plant hereabouts so thickly as in the country the 
plants will look well till about this time, and then “they 
go to leaf,” and the flower-beds are not worth looking at 
unless they are on gravel, chalk, or very sandy soil. 
It is not easy to strike a medium between thick and 
thin planting, or between all bloom in dune and all 
leaves in September, so much depends on the situation 
and on the kind of season, supposing the stock of 
plants to be the same. 
One need never be afraid of planting too thickly on 
very poor sandy soil, nor on chalk, even if the beds are 
of rich compost; but to insist on planting beds near 
London so thickly at first as they are now seen in most 
places in the country would only be insisting on their 
ruin in the autumn, and deprive those who stop at 
home, or who come home in September, of the best part 
of the seasou for enjoying the flower garden. 
There is a very common custom among visitors to 
country gardens in the autumn which leads to disappoint¬ 
ment in nine cases out of ten. It is this : they see some 
bedding plant which does better there than all the rest 
of that kind, and they must have cuttings of it. Next 
year or the year following they make a bed of it in the 
best part of the garden, and ten to one if it does not 
fail; the place is either too damp or too low for it, or 
it is altogether too dry for it, or the soil does not suit it 
as it did where they used so much of it. But there is 
hardly a good garden now-a-days without an experi¬ 
mental border, a mixed border where all sorts of plants 
may be planted in the mixed style, and it is on this 
border that all new or old plants should first be tried. 
I would never risk a bed in a good situation with a 
plant that was new to the place, however well it might 
have looked at Lord Broadacre’s, “where we were 
staying last autumn.” My own seedling Punch 
deceived hundreds who went through this routine. I 
received a good supply of the true Punch in May 
from Mr. Kinghorn, of Richmond, where I saw it last 
autumn, and it turns out the third best bed in the 
Experimental Garden, or the second best according to 
some tastes. Mr. Fleming’s New Trentham Scarlet is 
the richest bedder of all the 200 kinds of scarlet 
Geraniums we could muster in this garden. Millers 
Nosegay is the gayest, and Punch the next richest after 
the New Trentham Scarlet. We have not a sufficient 
quantity of the Richmond Gem yet, but next year it will 
be put in the place of honour, a number one bed. We 
planted a little bed of Baron Iiuyel and another of 
Harkaway to see their effect on their own bottom ; that 
is to say, without the effect being caused by a com¬ 
bination of kinds where these two would come in for 
edgings, and I must say of them both that they do not 
look so well as they do round other beds. The only 
place where I would use them again singly would be 
in those little intricate designs one often sees for terrace 
gardens, where little angular or curious-shaped beds 
must necessarily come in to fill the pattern. The Baron 
and Harkaway could there be managed as easily as the 
Variegated Bandy , the Gooseberry-leaf Geranium, and 
GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, August 11, 1857. 
such-like. Another very old kind, called Lucidum, is 
capital for such beds. 1 had it true last year in a letter 
from Mr. Sims, of the Foot’s Cray Nursery, Kent, before 
which I thought it was lost. It is like Shrvibland 
Pet. Everybody thinks he has.it, there being several 
kinds so much like it that it is difficult to make out the 
difference unless one is well acquainted with it. I 
never had it true at Shrubland Park after getting the 
name from all quarters I could think of. It is the only 
one of that race which will give good seedlings, and 
breeders who are curious about sections or races should 
possess it to work on. 
There is a world of show and interest for the flower 
garden to be yet discovered among obscure Geraniums 
and mere weeds of that family. Who was the father of 
Harkaway for instance ? Any good breeder can tell the 
mother, but I question if there are many breeders who 
could even guess who was or whence the father came ; 
and why should we not have a Harkaway in every one 
of the shades which are found in the family? Are we 
ever likely to have a real shaded bed of Geraniums 
such as The Cottage Gardener has been talking 
about since he left off running “on all fours?” This 
question sticks in the doorway of all the best gardens 
in England; at least, in the doors of the largest ones. 
We must have compassion on smaller gardens, however, 
for really there is no room but for the good style of 
plain dressing; but what would become of trade if all 
dressed alike, and were, like Abdallah’s Franks, looking 
just as if their dresses were stitched on them ? 
There are green Ptoses now, and green Petunias—new 
dyes by the hand of Nature; and Mr. Fortune speaks in 
his last book of an entirely new kind of artificial green 
he saw in China, and all of us must be content to be as 
green as any of them till we can dress a bed in six or 
seven kinds of tints and shades blending beautifully 
and imperceptibly. 
There is one way of heightening the beauty of a 
flower garden even when it is at its best point, as at 
present, and those who can afford it and are aware of 
the move seldom fail to practise it, especially if large 
parties are expected to visit about that time. When the 
beds are on gravel the thing is more telling after the 
edgings and everything are trimmed about the beds; 
the walks are fresh painted, as it were, with the finest 
gravel, and rolled to a smooth, glossy surface. This 
can be done in the hottest and driest weather if the 
walks are well watered first, then sprinkled over with 
gravel, the roller following immediately. There is 
nothing that I know of which pays better than this, and 
now that everything is at the height of its beauty this 
fresh gloss to the walks is just as telling as new painting 
or papering to the drawing-room, or new trimmings to a j 
bonnet. D. Beaton. 
SHORT CULTURAL NOTES FOR WINDOW 
GARDENERS. 
(Continued from page 262.) 
Carnations of the Tree kind bloom freely in an airy 
window in winter and spring. Strike cuttings in spring in a 
pot under a square of glass, and pot off when struck, or 
obtain young plants in May. In either case pinch out the 
point of the young plant, and place it in good soil out of 
doors, watering it well when necessary, and repot in Sep¬ 
tember, or keep repotting the plant, keeping it, if possible, 
on the balcony or out of doors in summer. We prefer plant¬ 
ing out and lifting and repotting when practicable. We have 
tried Anne Boleyn Pink and others in the same Avay, and 
with fair success. The pinching out the point of the shoot 
prevents flowering, and encourages the growth of flowering 
shoots in autumn. 
Chrysanthemum Indicum. —The Pompone varieties are the 
most suitable for windows, and dividing the plants or suckers 
