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THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Maech 20, 1860. 
Bush fruits, as Gooseberries and Currants, might line the sides 
of the walks, the plants being about five or six feet apart and 
three feet from the edge. Of the kinds of fruits suitable for a 
cottage garden, those which answer best in the immediate neigh¬ 
bourhood may be regarded as most likely; but if the district be 
not much of a fruit-growing one, some further advice will be 
necessary ; and those enumerated in the following select list have 
a wide reputation for their general good qualities as open standard 
trees for ordinary situations, as I purpose having fruits of other 
kinds for the wail. 
Apples :— Winter Queening. A pretty fruit, keeps and bears 
well. 
Yorkshire Greening. Excellent keeper, and good kitchen 
fruit. 
King Pippin, or London Pippin. Excellent for table or 
kitchen. 
Court of Wick. Like the last-named, may be used both 
ways. 
Wellington. Large fine kitchen fruit, tree bears well. 
Keswick Codlin. Very early and abundant bearer, but will 
not keep. 
Dvmelow's Seedling. An excellent Apple. 
Barcelona Pearmain. A good-keeping, useful Apple. 
Besides the above there are scores of other good kinds ; but it 
is well to caution the cottager that some of the kinds in most 
repute a few years ago are next to useless now, as the liihston 
Pippin and Haivthornden Apple, Jargonelle Pear, and some 
others. 
Peaks :— Ne Plus Meuris. An excellent winter Pear. 
Marie Louise. A good autumn Pear. 
Williams' Bon Chretien. Ripens about September. 
Beurre d'Aremberg. Good useful Pear. 
Duchesse d’Angouleme. Ditto, 
Pears are very numerous, but do not answer w’ell on every 
situation, and are useless in cold bleak places. 
Plums :— Diamond. A hardy good-bearing Plum, dark colour. 
Washington. Pale-coloured fruit. 
Golden Drop. Yellow, in much esteem for preserving. 
Goliath. —A large coarse Plum, good bearer. 
N.B.—The Green Gage is unquestionably the best Plum in 
cultivation yet; but the tree is rarely healthy, and gives evident 
tokens of being worn out. 
Eruits adapted eok a Wall. —It is not so easy to give 
advice on this head ; for thei’e is so much difference in situations, 
and tastes and habits differ so much, that it is no easy matter to 
give advice to all. But I will suppose the situation to be a 
very dry one, and the cottage to face the south, with a large 
gable end towards either the east or west, or both. This gable 
end presents the largest amount of wall to be met with, and a 
good situation for a trained tree; and as the cottager will be 
anxious to make a few shillings of the produce of anything out of 
the usual way, I should by all means advise him to plant a 
Morello Cherry. On the dry stony ground of many places near 
Maidstone this fruit attains a degree of perfection I have never 
seen it do anywhere else; and not a mile from this place a large 
tree of tins kind covers the whole gable end, and is making its 
way along the sides of a cottage. The occupier of it, I believe, 
pays his landlord 26s. a-year extra rent for this tree, and prunes 
and manages it himself as well. That it affords a fair return 
may be inferred, or the bargain would have been given up. 
Morello Cherries are certainly not exactly the most useful fruits 
to the cottager; but if he can sell them on an average for a 
shilling a-pound, and his tree prosper, he will often make a little 
money that may be of service in another way ; but if his situation 
be a sheltered very early one, a good tree of the Magduke Cherry 
may produce him fruit equally valuable as the Morello , but 
unless the Maydukes be early they are not of much value. Equal 
in importance to either of the above, and often more valuable, 
is the Apricot; which will do pretty well on the east, south, 
or west aspect, but in a general way it prefers a damper soil, 
a strong loam. And the same remark holds good with the 
Peach, Nectarine, and Plum—not that any of these like a soil 
saturated at all times with moisture; on the contrary to that, 
they like it firm, but not so dry and stony as the Morello 
Cherry. A good, sound, loamy bottom with a dry surface soil 
suits the Peach best, and this tree has the advantage of thriving 
near the sea-coast better than most others ; but the proper 
management of a Peach involves a greater amount of nicety than 
that of a Morello Cherry or Apricot, and being more subject to 
disease, I wovdd rather advise the others being grown than the 
Peach. The fruit of the latter is also not so saleable an article, 
while Apricots are always in demand. 
The Vine is a general favourite in some districts to cover the 
front of a dwelling, and very often the whole of the roof is 
covered too. Some rather strong timbers are laid up and down 
on the roof, and about six feet apart; and a piece of iron fixed 
to their top ends and bent like the letter J_, goes over and hangs 
to the ridge; strong laths are nailed lengthways to these about a 
foot or more apart, and the Yine is often trained over the whole 
roof at the distance of six or eight inches from it. Generally 
speaking, however, the Grapes so grown are less valuable as a 
marketable article than the Cherries and Apricots before noticed ; 
and unless the cottager can make good terms with some one fond 
of making home-made wine he will not receive much for his 
crop. But the Vine has the very useful property of being easily 
managed, and its pliable shoots accommodate themselves to any 
shaped space that the architecture of the building leaves available. 
The White Muscadine variety is the best in an ordinary way, 
but some other kinds have been highly spoken of. But it is only 
on fine dry soils that the Grape Vine ripens its fruit well; and 
even in such advantageous circumstances a fine season is also 
necessary. A cold wet summer and damp situation will produce 
nothing worth caring for in the Grape way; that excepting in 
the favoured places alluded to, a good prospect of turning the 
crop to account, the Yine had better be substituted by something 
else. An Apricot or a Plum would do better service, or where 
appearance is a matter of importance, a China Rose of the common 
blush variety would answer the purpose better; but if the 
cottage-door be screened by a porch, the pillars of this serve a 
more suitable place for the Rose. But more will be said on this 
head hereafter. J. Robson. 
NEW OE EAEE HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS. 
As it is now a good time to obtain seeds and plants of the 
above, I think a few brief notices of the most interesting will be 
in season, and no doubt useful to many of our readers. 
NEW HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS. 
Aquilegia Formosa, car. albo violacea. —White and violet. 
A. FORMOSA tricolor. —Three-coloured. 
Two handsome new garden varieties. Sow the seed in April, in 
sandy loam, in boxes placed in a cold frame, and when the plants 
can be handled, transplant them in the borders in a similar soil. 
Aubeietia grandiflora (Large-flowered Aubrietia). — A 
native of the Levant, growing three inches high and producing 
largish purple flowers; flowering in April and May. Culture the 
same as the preceding. Increased also by division. 
Delphinium Ciiinensis cceruleum (Blue Chinese Larkspur). 
D. Ciiinensis cceruleum rubrum (Red and blue Larkspur). 
Two beautiful varieties of a well-known perennial. The flowers 
of the latter are of a delicate sky-blue, spotted with red. In¬ 
creased by seed sown in April; also, by division of the plants in 
spring. 
Dianthus Verschaffeltii (Vercliaffelt’s Pink).—A dwarf, 
hardy perennial, a hybrid between Dianthus nanus crossed witli 
D. arboreus. Leaves narrow; flower single white with a crimson 
blotch at the base of the petals, eight or ten of which are on one 
stem. This may become a good bedding plant when more plenti¬ 
ful. Propagated by seeds, cuttings, and layers. 
D. Veitchii (Veitch’s Pink).—Also a hybrid, with crimson 
and white flowers, growing a foot and a half high, with heads of 
flowers like the well-known Sweet William. Propagated in the 
same way as the preceding. 
Lychnis Haageana.— A handsome hardy perennial, with 
flowers of a rich orange scarlet, two inches across, produced in 
heads on a stem one foot and a half high. 
L. Sieboldii (Siebold’s Lychnis).—Like the preceding in 
habit, but with pure white flowers. Both propagated by seeds 
and division. 
Pentstemon Jaffrayanus (J affray’s Pentstemon).— A hardy, 
half-shrubby, herbaceous plant. Native of California, introduced 
by Mr. Win. Lobb. A compact bushy habit, and flowers of a 
bright blue with pink throat. Not so well known as it deserves 
to be. Propagated by cuttings under a hand-light in summer. 
Sanifraga purpurescens (Reddish-purple Saxifrage).—A 
beautiful hardy perennial, with large leaves of an oval shape, and 
stems of flowers six inches high, supporting a branched sub- 
corymbose panicle of drooping flowers of a deep red-purple 
colour. Propagated by division in April or September. 
