THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, September 20, 1857. 400 
Now, if the shoemaker’s pegs were of larger dimensions, 
and a saw draught made in the combs, so that the section 
should be a hooked peg instead of a wedge, and the combs 
cleft as before with a strong knife, we should have many 
thousands of neat pegs fit for Verbenas and other trailing 
plants cut in the course of a wet day, and that, too, with no 
other tools than the common garden pruning saw and the 
sheath knife. Although this homely plan is not the best, I 
could not omit mentioning it, since some may try this cheap 
and ready method who do not require any great amount of 
pegs or any of the larger sizes. It is always difficult to get 
pegs just of the right size required; for the strength or 
delicacy of the shoot to be secured determines their length 
and strength, and hence the necessity for a perfect control 
Of the sizes of the pegs and forks. Hundreds of plants 
would be benefited by being trained near the earth if proper 
pegs could be had cheap; witness the Gooseberry fanciers 
training the cherished shoots near the earth, and wide apart 
from one another, by means of hooks and props, and I have 
seen this adopted by gardeners to get large fruit, as at 
Bicton by Mr. Barnes, and surely no kind of trellis could be 
so cheaply or so readily put down or taken up as a bundle 
of tent hooks and forked pegs. In putting down these, the 
hooked peg must always be placed outermost, and the fork 
between that and the root; for if this order is reversed, the 
shoot in turning up to the light, which it always will do, 
leaves the prop loose, whereas the hook being outermost 
becomes tighter by the upward growth of the plant. Many 
of our most showy plants are greatly improved in appearance 
by having their long naked stems hid, and their flowers 
brought forward by means of training; but on the other 
hand they look broken down if the flowers are pegged to 
the earth. 
The accompanying woodcut will show the way in which one 
peg is sawn out of another without waste, and another 
method where the hook hole is punched, or rather, pinched, 
with pincers such as railway ticket-takers use, and shoe¬ 
makers have, and how the remainder of the thin label or 
veneer is shaped into pegs by a few cuts of the shears. The 
stronger pegs are made by sawing and boring according to 
the lines shown on the section. 
That pegs will be made by machinery of fair proportions 
and marvellously cheap there cannot be a doubt, but this is 
not the place, and gardeners are not the people to inquire 
into the working of steam engines and circular saws for cut¬ 
ting wood into veneers. I have made the articles here de¬ 
scribed of various sizes, and that with a few inexpensive 
tools,—indeed, with little else than a saw. 
Pegs thus made of seasoned wood are very superior to 
those in common use, since they admit of hammering to 
fasten them, and when they are inserted the damp earth 
gets firmer by the swelling of their tissue. In order to 
arrive at the true character of these pegs we must take the 
actual dimensions, and see how many can be cut out of a 
solid foot of timber. 
When the smaller sizes are wanted, and the thickness of 
veneering is sufficiently broad to cut them from, a piece of 
wood four inches long by one inch broad, and half an inch 
thick, will give ten pegs at each end, or twenty in all out of 
two solid inches of wood, thus furnishing 17,000 and odd 
out of a solid foot of timber; and these slender pegs would 
then be quite as strong as the well-known “ Menographs,” 
or wooden labels for plants, manufactured by Messrs. Ling- 
ham of Birmingham; and even when the pegs are made of 
large dimensions, ten inches long, half an inch broad, and a 
quarter of an inch thick, the enormous number of two 
thousand and odd can be cut from one cubic foot of timber, 
the full value of which would be from 6d. to 2s. 6d., accord¬ 
ing to circumstances, but the average of Is. or Is. 3d. would 
be a fair estimate of the cost per foot for materials. Contrast 
this with a couple of thousand of hooked sticks ten inches 
long, cut from the spray or branches of trees, of sufficient 
strength to admit of being hammered in driving ; instead of 
packing them into the compass of a cubic foot, I find they 
would fill the body of a cart—being forty-six faggots, ten 
inches by nine inches, or about twenty-seven cubic feet, and 
nearly two cwt. 
The training of a wall tree could not be effected by means 
of shreds pulling all one way, but it is accomplished readily 
by pulling the branches right and left, and thus any distance 
or direction is secured to the bearing wood. Now, suppose 
a plant trained to the face of the earth instead of to the 
face of a wall, there is wanted the left-hand power to keep 
the shoot away from the earth, as well as the right-hand 
power to keep it to the earth ; and it is here that the forked 
prop is required, without which the system of level training, 
which I am advocating, is impracticable. 
By far the most beautiful flower-bed I ever saw was a 
crescent of Moss Roses, pegged down near the earth upon 
moss, so that the flowers rose upright upon their own foot¬ 
stalks, and the foliage had just room enough to fall without 
trailing upon the ground. 
By means of pegs and props hundreds of rambling plants 
might be trained or led where we please, that otherwise 
would get entangled, and would not behave themselves either 
upon the earth or tied to a stake in the air. Nearly half the 
summer labour of some flower gardens is the propping and 
tying of the flotvers; and go where you may in the flowery 
days of summer, you find gardening folks with sticks in 
their hands, and strands of matting in their teeth to tie the 
flowers with. The system of propping here detailed will at 
least support one-half of all the hardy ornamental plants 
requiring props, and that at a cost of fifty per cent, less than 
is now required to do them. The foliage of plants, instead 
of being bundled up in faggots to sticks, should be exposed 
to sun and air, and this can onty be done with an amazing— 
I had almost said unreasonable—number of ties; it is 
therefore necessary, in developing this plan, to cheapen the 
props before using them so extravagantly, for it must come 
to this at last, that every flower-head shall have a place to 
itself, and by raising it higher or lower according to circum¬ 
stances, great beauty and variety will be produced. 
Besides bedding plants that are usually pegged, and ram¬ 
bling plants that require tall sticks, there are things that 
want raising to form a semi-globe, whose natural habits are 
too flat to show them to advantage in certain positions, and 
there are few flower borders that have not a particular point 
of sight to be viewed from, so that sheets of bloom have to 
be [created by pegging or tying the flower-heads forward, 
where the habit of the plant is to produce only awkward 
clusters of flower-stalks, half of which would be hid by the 
