! 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, December 8, 1857. 
146 
the 23rd of November), has been more than it some¬ 
times has been during the middle of summer. But 
such growths are useless, and can only tend to make 
them perish the quicker when that change to dry cold 
sets in, which we are all wishing for. J. Robson. 
GLOWER GARDEN. 
The newest discovery for the flower garden is the 
Martinmas Daisies, to come in just at the tail of the 
! Michaelmas Daisies, and to contmue as long as they 
j can, or as long as the frost and snow will let them. I 
j have six kinds of Martinmas Daisies for the Experi¬ 
mental ; cut flowers of which are now in water glasses 
; before me, as fresh as ever, after being gathered just 
eighteen days. We shall then presume that Martin¬ 
mas Daisies are good for cut flowers for the drawing 
room at the beginning of winter; and if the place be 
not too hot or too dry for them, they may be expected 
to last from a fortnight to three weeks, with occasional 
trimming and fresh additions. They are as hardy as 
Micliaflmas Daisies, and as easy to increase. They 
will do for flower-beds, after the bedding plants are 
up ; or to stand all the season along the back of mixed 
borders, or the front of shrubberies. But the best 
place of all for them is the “block bank,” the dell, 
the rock-garden, the wilderness, along the “ green 
drives,” and in all other places where natural scenery 
is attempted to be artificially imitated. 
The best way of giving a proper idea of them, is to 
say they are very much like Cinerarias on a^ large 
scale ; and “we ” have the first six of them that have 
been let out. They are in the tenth or twelfth degree, 
in lineal descent, from the Chusan Daisy of Mr. For¬ 
tune, the parent of the Pompone race, and they are 
also the rarest of that tribe ; but mere accident brought 
them under your notice so early in life. When I was 
nearly spent out at Mr. Salter’s the other day, after 
getting all the “ favours ” I could for you, I asked for 
a particular favour for myself, namely, to be shown the 
secret of raising new Chrysanthemums and Pompones 
for my own amusement; raising and crossing seedlings 
having been my chief hdbby for years. Now, I am 
| in possession of the whole secret from beginning to 
end, and that end is the Martinmas Daisies ; and they 
are the “seifs,” singularities, and single-blossomed 
Pompones, with rays and disks far more diversified 
than among the Cinerarias. It will take ten thousand 
seedlings, in England, to make one good Pompone and 
six choice Martinmas Daisies : then, to get at my six, 
I must have looked over as many thousand seedlings ; 
and so I did. And it was at my suggestion that the 
idea of preserving the cream of the “ seifs ” origin ated. 
I begged hard that a small selection should be made 
every season from the seed-beds, to be propagated and 
sold for a mere trifle, just enough to make it worth 
the trouble, but not sufficient to encourage a specu¬ 
lation on their behglf: and I named four shillings the 
dozen as the highest price; being satisfied that no 
gardener, in a large place, could lay out four shillings 
to more advantage. They are not suited for places of 
limited extent, and limited judgment, for disposing of 
pieces of ground after natural wildness. Ten or 
twelve years back I would have given my sleeve 
buttons for a collection of them for the “ block bank ” 
and the Swiss. cottage at Shrubland Park. What 
could be more in character than large masses of them 
about the lake and river at Trentham, or about the 
! rockery on the way to the large conservatory at Chats- 
! worth r And they require no more culture than the 
common Asters we call Michaelmas Daisies. Martin¬ 
mas is the autumnal “ term ” in Scotland for changing 
j many things, including farms and servants, paying 
debts, buying and selling stock, and a hundred other i 
moves ; and it is about the same time that these 
plants come into flower; therefore, to our Swan River 
Daisies, Chusan Daisy, and Michaelmas Daisies, we 
now add Martinmas Daisies. Ask for stiff, erect kinds, 
which require no staking, and for the best and liveliest 
colours ; and in a few more years, my word for it, we 
shall have them quite as gay as pot Cinerarias: but 
if we let the chance once slip, as we did with the 
Dahlia, it may never occur again. 
The next move is made, but not yet proved. At 
the time of bedding out last May, we cleared a large 
border—an old mixed border—from all the spring 
flowers, except bulbs ; and among the rest was a whole 
row of herbaceous J?atonies, just done flowering. No 
plants are more gay than they while in bloom, or 
more provokingly in the way of the bed-planter for 
the rest of the year. Their large, lumbering, heavy 
heads have no beauty ; and to cut them off w r ould 
ruin the flowering afterwards. But remove them 
with large balls, as we did in the Experimental; take 
them to an out-of-the-way border, and plant them just 
as deep as they stood in the flower border ; give them 
a thorough soaking with water ; and they w r ill require 
no more looking after, even in such a season as that of j 
last summer. They are just now showing strong, ! 
plump, prominent crimson buds for next year’s growth; j 
and they are to be removed to the old mixed border, 
shortly, as soon as it is thoroughly trenched; there to 
bloom again next May better than before ; to be then j 
removed as last season ; and so on for a lifetime. But j 
will they bloom next year ? Yffa, that they will: for 
the shift to a fresh Iborder, that good soaking, and the 
mulching of cocoa-nut fibre made them grow and 
shine again in their leaves, so that they cannot fail to 
bloom strongly. Meantime their roots will take such 
a firm hold on the new-trenched soil, that their flowers 
will last longer than before. 
By-the-by, how do they manage! the borders for 
spring and mixed planting down in your part of the 
country P Here, about London, they go on the old 
plan of letting plants “alone” as long as they live; 
and when they die, they (the Londoners), say it is all 
owing to the smoke. But that is because they know • 
no better; and their betters know that it is of little 
use to persuade them against a settled conviction. 
But to see their mixed borders in the spring of the 
year is enough to give one the “horrors they look 
like an archipelago of islands in the midst of a retiring 
sea. They have been and dug them, as they say : but 
such digging you never saw—just like scratching the 
surface, and getting as much mould as will cover the 
leaves they cut off. Then come the frost and rain, 
which settle the border, and the herbaceous plants 
look like so many islands, as I have just said, high 
and dry. The March winds, and the islands are, 
in a manner, scorched; the islanders all but starved, 
attempting to bloom later and later every succeed¬ 
ing season; till some new plants are heard of and 
tried instead, which do no better, but worse; and, 
you hear that all this is from the smoke nuisance. But, 
depend upon it, all is not gold that glitters; nor is it 
all the smoke which kills in these and similar borders. 
I have seen borders nearly as bad five hundred miles 
from the smoke of London. More than the half of it 
comes from reading books instead of periodicals. 
No man sits down to write a book on practice until 
ho is half daft on the subject, or half bewildered 
for want of one. Burns says— 
“ Some books arc leas frae end to end; ” 
and Beaton adds, some books on gardening are nearly 
as bad. One book says, you must not touch a branch I 
to cut it off; another book, you must not touch a leaf ! 
