279 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION, January 20, 1857. 
is this expedient; but the word employed by him, “ fool,” 
is the ouly one suitable to the person who would set about 
doing it in the month of June, in the height of the season, 
when the hive is filled with stores and brood to overflowing.] 
NOSEGAY AND OTHER GERANIUMS. 
“ I am most anxious to have a few Nosegay and con¬ 
tinuous-blooming Geraniums, but lcnow little or nothing 
about them, neither have I found any one who can give me 
any satisfactory information about them. I would now ask 
you to publish the names of six of each sort. I should 
also like to know to what class of Geraniums Quercifolia 
rosea purpurea, Fair Helen , and a small Gooseberry-leaved 
(sweet-scented) belong.”— George Pool. 
[At present we believe there is only one kind of Nosegay 
Geranium to be had in the trade, the pink Nosegay or purple 
Nosegay—the colour is a shade of pink and a shade of purple 
—and that because there is no demand for them, or rather, 
because there was no demand for them. There are six or 
seven beautiful bedding Nosegays in private gardens. Ladies 
prefer them for beds, and Sir Joseph Paxton offered very 
handsome prizes for them at the Crystal Palace without 
“bringing out” a single kind, and The Cottage Gardener 
has spread their fame to the ends of the earth. We have 
now two letters on the table from Australia quoting from 
our pages, and giving handsome orders to the trade on the 
authority of The Cottage Gardener. The Nosegays 
belong to the scarlet Horse-shoe section, and all of that 
breed are naturally “continuous bloomers.” The old kinds 
of greenhouse Geraniums are not naturally continuous 
bloomers, but some of them bloomed very early, and some 
very late; then, by crossing these verys, an intermediate 
race of continuous bloomers has been obtained, and from 
these the best fancy bedders are selected, and, to distinguish 
them farther from their summer-flowering parents, they 
have been called hybrid perpetuals, like Roses. The best 
sorts of any fancy are those which one likes best. Our 
selection generally includes three kinds of Diadematum, the 
Old Diadematum, the Diadematum rubescens, bicolor, and 
reyiurn ; then the lyncscens breed, of which Lady Mary Fox 1 
is the best; then the Quercifoils, or Oak-leafs, of which 
quercifolium and quercifolium tioccineum or superbum are the | 
best bedders; and lastly and most lustily, the race of 
Isidoreanum has produced the best of the continuous flowers, 
which is called Dennis's Alma. See an account of it in 
Hampton Court Gardens in our last volume. Quercifolia rosea 
purpurea and Fair Helen are of the Oak-leaved section ; the 
Gooseberry-leaved is of the Citriodora section.] 
FORCING VARIEGATED MINT AND CERASTIUM 
TOMENTOSUM. 
“ Will you inform me if the Variegated Mint will stand 
forcing in the spring to make cuttings from, like Verbenas, 
&c. ? I have a pot of it, and want to make the most of it. 
Will Cerastium tomentosum stand the like treatment?”— 
Arthur Loftus. 
[The Variegated Mint may be set to work any day from 
the 20th of January to the end of May, and be treated by 
amateurs just like the Ilobinson Defiance Verbena all that 
time. Rut fast gardeners would think nothing of filling a 
box with plain Mint, or Parsley, or curled and triple-curled 
Parsley and Variegated Mint, putting them into a pit with 
Pine Apples or air plants, and getting thousands and thou¬ 
sands of cuLtings from them ; but people should never run 
in gardening till they can walk, nor walk till they learn to 
“ step it.” It is the anxiety to learn ail at once, like getting 
rich all at once, which leads to the “ broad way ” of disap¬ 
pointment. 
The Crystal Palace gardeners are, perhaps, the only gar¬ 
deners who could tell about the Cerastiwm tomentosum in 
heat; but they are such nimble fellows we can never get up 
to them to ask anything, and till we do, take our best guess, 
and try the Cerastium exactly like Salviafnlyens for cuttings, 
and you may depend upon being safe. Any heat up to 55° 
or OO u will nut hurt it.] 
HYBRID PERPETUAL ROSES. 
“ Being about to purchase a dozen Hybrid Perpetual 
Roses I should feel obliged if Mr. Beaton would name them 
in The Cottage Gardener. I want the very best sorts, 
new or old I do not mind.”— An Amateur. 
[The best twelve Hybrid Perpetual Roses do not depend 
on the smell, the size, the doubleness or singleness, or on 
the freeness or shyness of flowering, neither upon constancy 
or inconstancy; and all that has hitherto been written on 
either side of the question is just so much sense thrown in 
the air. The question turns upon two hinges : whether the 
kinds are “worked” low or high, or are only on their own 
roots, is the top hinge ; and the kind of soil to grow them on, 
not in, is the bottom hinge. Keep these hinges well oiled 
by common sense, derived from more common practice, not 
fancy practice, or commercial practice for “ turning a penny,” 
and you will never want for Roses. Roses are more in¬ 
fluenced by soil than either Pears or Grapes, and the wild 
Dog Rose more so than most of the Hybrids. Unless the 
soil is strong loam inclining to clay, a Hybrid Perpetual will 
grow on it better than does a Dog Rose ; therefore it is better 
on its own roots than being worked for that soil. If a Hybrid 
Rose is of a dwarf or even moderate growth, and is worked 
on a Dog Rose, which is naturally of a most robust con¬ 
stitution, which constitution is greatly excited by high culti¬ 
vation, the more moderate growth of the head perpetual will 
so curb the tendency to exuberant growth in the Dog-Rose 
stock in a year or two as to turn it to ill health, otherwise 
called sulky and “ not doing well; ” therefore that dwarf or 
moderate-growing Hybrid Perpetual would do better on its 
own roots in that soil, or in the best Rose soil, than on the 
Dog Rose, on account of its natural tendency. A very strong 
Rose, or a very free-growing Rose, will grow better on a Dog 
Rose in good soil, but not in bad soil, than on its own roots, 
because the roots of the Dog Rose will bear the ill effects of 
a wet or cold bottom better than the roots of the strong¬ 
growing Rose; but if the two, the worked strong Rose and 
the strong Rose unworked, were to be taken up every other 
season, so as to have their roots more numerous and nearer 
the surface, the unworked plants would do the best, as we 
might infer, from their being in a more natural condition. 
In all soils which have not proved first-rate for growing 
Roses, or saj a thoroughly good Rose soil, we prefer all classes 
of Roses on their own roots. There is no test to prove a 
soil to be “Rose soil” without first trying Roses on it, and 
some Roses are very peculiar as to the soil they do in best. 
Gloire de Rosamene and La Reine are instances: where one 
of them does well, the other is certain to do very moderately. 
There is not a man living who can tell the best twelve Roses 
- for another man at a distance from him. All that the 
most experienced can do is to fix on such kinds as do well 
generally, and in most seasons; the rest must be determined 
by individual experience, each one for himself on his own 
soil and locality; the locality has as much to do with this as 
the soil itself. Some seedlings of all our favourite plants 
go off very much after the first flush. Roses and Dahlias 
are notorious for that; therefore any Rose that has not 
been six years in cultivation cannot be said to have been 
proved for that country, or county, or climate. The following 
are the best Hybrid Perpetual Roses in the greatest number 
of instances:—Geant des Batailles,Baronne Prevost, Duchess 
of Sutherland, Mrs. Elliot and La Reine (two uncertain 
! kinds, however), William Griffiths, Madame Laffay and 
I Madame Rivers, Pius IX., and Robin Hood, General 
; Jacqueminot for brilliancy, and Dr. Marx, or Robin Hood, 
or Auguste Mie, or Baronne Hallez ; but after the first six 
or eight there are a dozen of about equal merit.] 
TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
Heating a Conservatory from a Kitchen Boiler.— The last 
paragraph in answer to “Jane Forrest,” page 183, is hardly so 
clear as it might be. If the pipes could be fastened to the boiler on the 
opposite side from the fire, lead pipes would do as well as any. Much 
trouble would be saved if the supply cistern lor the boiler could be 
reached from the greenhouse level, and the person who attended the 
plants would see it was kept supplied with water. It matters little 
where the taps for allowing the circulation are placed, whether in the 
kitchen or the fireplace. We had a mournful tale of expenses and 
disasters for a small greenhouse the other day. It was about five feet 
