296 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, February 14, I860. 
It may be said that tlio Society now consists of two 
great divisions,—tlie Ornamental and the Useful. The 
former will be represented by the new garden now in 
course of formation at Kensington Gore ; and the latter 
by the old garden at Chiswick, which is to be retained, 
and made more practical than ever. The management of 
these two gardens, so far as relates to matters of cul¬ 
tivation only, are placed under one general superinten¬ 
dent, who was lately appointed in the person of Mr. 
George Eyles. At Kensington Gore all public prome¬ 
nades and great exhibitions will take place. Hither 
the offices and exhibition-rooms will be removed, and 
here the ordinary meetings of the Society will be 
held. 
Chiswick Garden is to be maintained entirely as a great 
experimental establishment ; and the manner in which 
the practical operation of the Society is to be carried out 
is by the formation of various Committees, of which the 
Fruit and Vegetable, and the Floral, are already in ope¬ 
ration. Each of these Committees is placed under the 
management of a Secretary, the appointment to the 
former being accepted by Mr. Robert Hogg, and to the 
latter by Mr. Thomas Moore. 
These Committees will have the entire control over the 
departments to which they refer. In the fruit and vege¬ 
table department, “ the business of the Committee shall be 
to encourage the production of new and improved va¬ 
rieties of fruits and vegetables, by examining and re¬ 
porting on all such as may be submitted - to it, or culti¬ 
vated for that purpose in the garden. Also, to collect 
for the Council reliable information respecting the adap¬ 
tability of particular kinds of fruits and vegetables to the 
varied conditions of soil, locality, &c., of the United 
Kingdom, and to provide for the naming of fruits for¬ 
warded by or through Fellows for that purpose.” 
“ The Secretary of such Committee to take charge of 
all fruits and vegetables sent to the Society, and to make, 
if approved by the Fruit and Vegetable Committee, 
arrangements for having their merits tested, and to re¬ 
port the result to the Committee, for the information of 
the Council.” To watch all comparative trials of the 
qualities of fruits and vegetables at the Garden, and to 
report thereon. “To have full power over such growing 
crops as come within the range of the Fruit and Vege¬ 
table Committee— i.e., all new fruits and vegetables, and 
all other fruits and vegetables grown or required for com¬ 
parison or nomenclature.” 
Such are a few of the leading features of the consti¬ 
tution of the Fruit and Vegetable Committee, which will 
serve as an example of the others also. 
Now, this is nothing more than ought to have been 
done all along. The work which the present Council has 
undertaken is just what formerly constituted the life¬ 
blood of the Society, and which former Councils never 
ought to have relinquished. We have long urged some 
such course as this ; we have endeavoured honestly and 
sincerely to stir up the Fellows of the Society to a sense 
of the importance there was for a vigorous prosecution 
and encouragement of practical horticulture; we have 
long ago shown how this could not be done without a 
preponderance in the Council of men who were either 
devoted to gardening as a pursuit, or men of that prac¬ 
tical and business-like constitution of mind which always 
leads the possessor of it to a right conclusion, in whatever 
position he may be called upon to occupy ; and it is no 
small degree of pleasure to us to feel that all we said 
and recommended, however distasteful it might have been 
to the existing powers at the time, was right, and is now 
justified by the course that has been adopted. 
As the best assurance that the Society will now prosper, 
it is only necessary to refer to the list of gentlemen who 
now compose the Council. Not chosen because of their 
social position only, but, combined with that, men of 
sound practical knowledge, sagacity, and energy ; and 
with such men as its Councillors, the Horticultural Society 
may enter upon the field open to it, confident of public 
support and perfect success. 
PLANTING A CIRCULAR BED. 
In a late number of your paper was a suggestion for planting 
a circular bed with—first, a ring of Daphne cneorum; next of 
Erica herhacea; then of S/cimmia Japonica, and dwarf Golden 
Hollies for the centre. 
I have had such a bed prepared for planting in a situation ex¬ 
posed fully to the sun, and am now told by a nurseryman, “ that 
S/cimmia Japonica will not thrive unless in the shade, that its 
leaves turn yellow, and fall off, and are very subject to the red 
spider.” Will you state what is your experience of it ? and if it 
is unsuitable for a sunny situation, please to suggest a substitute. 
The soil of my bed is composed of rich sandy loam, leaf mould, 
and peat.— Osgoldcross. 
[See what Mr. Beaton says to-day in answer to your inquiry. 
—Eds. C. G.] 
SPRING AND SUMMER BEDDING. 
There are spring and summer bedding, and there is a 
bedding for all the year round ; and, according to “ The 
Doctor’s Boy,” there is a mode of bedding vrhich is 
“ of a more economical character than is practised in 
large establishments.” Since then (March 17th, 1857), 
we have received many letters requesting to know more of 
this “more economical” way, and our spring bedding 
rules and suggestions ever since have had reference to 
that very way. 
At the “ back front ” of the large conservatory at Kew 
(the front of a garden structure, in the language of gar¬ 
deners,faces the meridian, the north is the back front) may 
be seen the best plan for the all-the-year-round style of 
bedding that I know in the neighbourhood of London. The 
American ground is the part I mean, and everyone who 
has the chance of seeing that style, and wishes for it, 
ought to note down the names of the low, spreading, 
shining, dwarf and half-dwarf plants, which ai - e massed 
there in the order of botany ; and from seeing their 
heights and manner of growth one could easily arrange 
so many of them in one bed as that the highest kinds 
should be in the centre, and that very small-leaved kinds 
and very broad-in-the-leaf kinds should not come in con¬ 
trast close together, unless the one were a very light green, 
and the other as much the darker from the common run 
of evergreens. A row of plants of Tree Box, two feet 
high, one of the lightest greens, round a centre of Rho¬ 
dodendron ponticum, which is one of the darkest greens, 
will exemplify what I mean ; but the same row of plants 
of Tree Box would not tell in front of a centre mass of 
Aucubas, another light green, and lighter spotted, be¬ 
cause of the difference of the size in their leaves ; not 
because the colours were near. If the leaves of the Tree 
Box were as large as the leaves of Rhododendron pon¬ 
ticum, and of their shape, the two would agree perfectly— 
that is, the Tree Box and the Aucuba would agree, not in 
the contrast between them, but in the two put together 
forming a stronger light green than either of them could 
do, or give, by itself.' But if the leaves of the Tree Box 
were as big as the leaves of a Rhododendron ponticum, 
the two put side to side would agree in contrast. The 
“ harmony of contrast,” as the great French dyer says, 
the harmony of contrast is here of the very lowest kind, 
on account of the dullness of the green of the Box tree. 
The Aucuba put in front of a Rhododendron ponticum, 
or between the eye and the Pontic Rhododendron, would 
raise the harmony of contrast four degrees nearer to per¬ 
fection, on account of the healthy, shining, light green of 
the “Japonica;” and a very healthy Golden-leaved Holly 
in front of the Rhododendron would give the highest 
degree of this kind of harmony that we can constitute 
from our store of hardy evergreens. 
There, then, are the three degrees of the comparison 
of light green and dark green shrubs planted together in 
