132 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, June 7, 1S59. 
the fact. “ I wish I could make quite sure of it, and I 
would offer 30,000 plants of it at the beginning of May,” 
was the common saying in the nurseries, when, to my 
own personal knowledge, little tufty plants of it, from 
last autumn cuttings, were worth just one shilling a-piece. 
From Ipswich and from Southampton it has been offered 
to send it up to London by the tens of thousands at 
planting-out time, and they had to be told that it would 
be “ no go ’’there ; that millions of seedlings were already 
*up ; and that we all believed, from the experience of the 
last two years, that they would prove quite true; but 
some how or other there seemed to be a hole in this our 
creed, which hole must be closed up in the heat of 
summer. 
The practice at the Experimental Garden with doubt¬ 
ful seeds, or fancy surmisings, is to get the means of 
testing them from two, three, or more sources, so as to 
have so many chances for reaching the truth. That plan 
has produced two kinds of seedling speciosa Lobelias 
this spring ; and if they turn out both excelling, or one as 
good as the mother, and the other still better, or if both 
are not worth looking at, we shall make the result plainly 
known ; and if ten thousand of our subscribers would be 
so good as to write up to say this or that of their seedling i 
speciosas, the question would be confirmed in one month. 
For the last three or four years the Horticultural 
Society has been sowing mischief among the Fellows, by 
sending out little sealed packets of seeds of Lobelia 
gracilis under the name of ramosoides. I had one each 
year, and every seed of them produced a gracilis, which 
is as different from ramosoides as that is from Lobelia 
racemosoides of some living beings. 
But about Lobelia trigonicaulis. In case they may not 
have it at Chiswick, I shall be anxious to receive early 
reports of what it is in reality as an edger, as we missed 
it at planting-out time in the Experimental. The same 
with double Petunias. We never tried any but the old 
double white, which failed everywhere; so that there is a j 
general shyness about planting them in beds, even if one 1 
had the kinds. One thing about Verbenas and double | 
Petunias is, that the best judges of their merits can no 
more tell from cut ilowers what they are likely to turn 
out in beds than a new-born infant; and that to send such 
flowers through the post, for the opinion of such good j 
judges, is even worse than useless. It may turn out that ’ 
a flower which pleases "best in a room is, of all other j 
flowers of its class, the least suited for massing in beds. It 
deceives one of the best judges, he gives a conscientious | 
opinion in its favour, thousands buy it, and are deceived 1 
as soon as they put it to the test—the only true test of a 
bedder—to see it growing from week to week, and month ; 
after month, for one whole season. 
If the experimentalists for the Horticultural Society 
will take that branch in hand, and do it thoroughly, and 
perfectly independently, they would confer a boon, more I 
or less, on every lover of gardening. But by their plan 
and practice of “ proving ” so many packets of seeds for J 
certain nurserymen, they do not the slightest good to a 
single being except to the said nursery or seedsmen, and 
not even so much to them as one might think. 
Let any one of those defrauders who impose on the 
public with fine names and new wonders in the seed line, 
find out that Ho. 22 of a Pea, or Carrot, or Carnation, had 
been found at Chiswick Experimental Garden to be the 
best, the shortest, or longest, or the most sweet, and sure 
enough lie has bushels of the very thing in sealed packets, 
as true as the Society’s Lobelia ramosoides; and where 
could you find the heart to dissuade people from enjoying 
the luxury of buying from such fellows “who sell so 
cheaply,” and give more than the value of the money in 
sound information ? 
There seems no end to the variegated Geraniums, and 
some of them will certainly make splendid bedders. 
Some are only fit for edging beds of low plants, on 
account of their dwarf habit; and many of them, when ! 
growA into large flat specimens, will be favourite pot 
plant?; for drawing-room, lobby, and staircase decoration. 
Ho plant docs better in a draught and in extremely dry 
positions about a house than some of the dwarf fancy 
variegated Geraniums; but they must be large to be 
worth looking at, and big enough to fill a No. 16 pot by 
the end of March. 
Have them plunged in a vase or ornamental pot all the 
summer, and change them from one place to another, and 
from side to side ; keep the top mossed, and be most par¬ 
ticular about the watering; be quite sure they need 
water ere they get it, and out with them of a morning on 
the grass or gravel before people are much about; give 
them three or four good waterings in succession—if a pot 
is well drained you cannot hurt a plant by passing ten 
gallons of soft, pond, or rain water through the pot in so 
many minutes : so, if you give one gallon of water to a 
variegated in three or four turns, no harm will ever come 
of it in summer, but much good. Let the pots drain off 
the last drop which will run away before you put them 
up again, or at all events before you moss them. Let the 
moss be as green as grass, and have it watered at the 
same time thoroughly; throw it in a bucket of water, 
plunge it two or three times, take it out in handfulls, and 
squeeze the water out of it, and let it half dry before it is 
put over the pots. By that very mode I have seen 
Geraniums do uncommonly well, with watering only 
twice a-week in the hottest weather, and where bare pots 
holding the same kinds of plants would need to be watered 
twice a-day, on account of the currents and dryness of 
the place where they stood. 
But moss deceives more than crinoline. If you could 
see the beautiful plants sent from tire country and from 
the nurseries to the London drawing-rooms at this season, 
they would make your hair stand on end. The pots are 
in large trays, or baskets with tray-like stands, to make 
sure of not wetting the carpets. The best gardener 
among the domestics looks after these flowers. The pots 
are all mossed out of sight; and my lady looks at them 
as often as she goes into the room or leaves it; and as 
long as the surface of the pots is moist, the belief is that 
all is right, when the fact is just the contrary. Mossing 
pots lias this effect among others. The surface of the 
ball, or top of the pot, is the last part to get dry ; and by 
seeing the top of the pot wet one is easily deceived into 
the belief that the plant wants no more water that day or 
that afternoon, when the chances are, at least with Heaths, 
that in another hour, or two at most, the plants will be 
past redeeming by any other means than drawing out the 
purse, or sending home for more to go the way of all the 
earth. 
A new and an economical plan has sprung up in London, 
and is growing fast, to do with room-plants as should be 
done. “ Such and such people never lose a plant; one 
never sees a dead leaf or living insect on them, and their 
plants never seem to want water ; for, go when you like, 
there they are as fresh as in the country.” The secret 
and safety of such plants is an understanding with some 
nurseryman to send a practical gardener to “ look ” at 
the plants every morning or every other day. Such a 
man can see, by “looking,” what state plants are in 
without examining the pots; and after “looking” at 
them for one week he can tell, without seeing them, what 
each is most likely to want. 
It takes an age of time to make good, large, handsome 
specimens of some of the new dwarf variegated and fine¬ 
leaved Geraniums. But there is a new way, and a cheap 
way, as fast as an express train, and safer than bedding- 
out Geraniums. It is this. After all the bedding is done, 
the young stock for decoration, in the single specimen 
style, gets a shift: these variegated aud other pet kinds 
forming part of the stock. The shift is into one size 
larger pots, and the soil is lighter than common. The 
move is to get a fresh start in the roots as soon as possible; 
and the easiest and cheapest way is to put all these newly- 
