89 
'I'llK COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, 
distinct races, and with (lie Mcdinilly, in small pots, nothing can 
look more nice or gorgeous; but old plants of Mcdinillas, in 
pots, we cannot abide. Get a stool of Medinilla, stump it every 
year for cuttings, mind the Hydrangea, and have no more ideas of 
books on stove plants. W hy, such books would not pay for their 
own wrappers. 
Plant your Rose garden in your own best stylo; send us a copy 
of the plan, with references to the names of the Roses ; and we 
shall tell what is right or wrong, and no unrash mortal can do 
more.] 
CLOTHING A WALL. 
“ J am much obliged to you for your answer to my inquiry 
about the brick wall adjoining my tlower garden. My difficulty 
is rather with the wall itself, than with the border. The red 
■bricks offend me, and what I want to know is, how best to hide 
them ! Roses are first-rate in the summer ; but winter comes, and 
then the Roses do little, cither to ornament or conceal the wall. 
1 like your notion of Ivy faced with the scarlet Emperor Gera¬ 
nium. But I am not sure that I should not prefer ‘ choice half- 
hardy plants.’ What plants would you recommend,—keeping 
winter in mind, — to prevent the wall being bare ? It has 
occurred .to me, that- much might be done, by placing plants in 
pots, boxes, or vases, in front of the wall, which, of course, 
could be changed when desirable.”— Emma. 
[There is nothing more easily hidden than the face of a brick 
wall seven feet high. You may do it in one week, by nailiug Ivy 
seven feet high, growing in pots; but the border is the great 
consideration, and the greatest expense. Ivy plants in pots, and 
seven feet high, to cover 500 yards of a seven-feet wall, would 
not cost half so much as one year’s disagrecablouess of seeing a 
brick wall in one’s w'ay. A row of common Laurels, seven feet 
high, would be a greater expense than the Ivy; but if the Laurels 
were planted three or four feet from the wall, they would hide it 
more than the Ivy. The Ivy docs not hide the idea of a wall, 
only the face of it; but the face of your wall, and many other 
walls, may bo a good deal disguised, by raising mounds of earth 
'against them, at intervals moro or less distant, according to 
taste,—say, a space of ten or twelve feet along the wall, and four 
or five feet out from the wall, —to bo filled with any common soil, 
and brought up to a point near the top of the wall,—half a cone, 
in fact. These mounds should be planted with small plants of 
Ivy, as the heaping-up proceeds. Then, with the spaces of wall 
between these projections,—to be also covered with Ivy, and a 
good border in front,—you might make that part the boundary to 
an experimental garden, as Mr. Beaton tells us he has done at the 
Experimental, l’lacing plants in pots, boxes, or vases, in front 
of a seven-feet wall, to hide it, is an idea which would never occur 
to a man of practice ; but women of practice never leave a stone 
■unturned for an “object,” and have succeeded in this. A wall 
covered with Ivy, with Roses hi the tubs before the Ivy, and 
trained up among it, was recommended, long since, in these 
pages.] 
HARDINESS OE L1BOCEDEUS CH1LENSIS. 
“ While making a list of hardy Conifers to have sent me to 
look at, from an eminent York nurseryman, I chanced to meet 
with the following passage in Tun Cottage Gardener, where 
Mr. Beaton says:—‘Either Libocedrus tetragona or L. Chi¬ 
lensis, or both, arc as hardy as the common Larch, and grow to 
a much larger timber.’ Upon the strength of this, 1 added 
them to my list. In reference to them, I received the following 
reply :—‘ We can send you Libocedrus Chilensis, if you desire it, 
but it is not hardy. Wo do not grow L. tetragona.' When 
doctors differ, who shall decide? Not— Franic Grant.” 
[Libocedrus Chilensis is just as hardy as Mr. Beaton said it 
was. It- is quite as hardy as the common Laurel round London ; 
but every one of the common Laurels were frosted and twice 
killed to the ground, in and near Loudon, and in the Experi¬ 
mental Garden, during this century. Whether or not the Libo¬ 
cedrus would have stood that degree of cold, we cannot say. 
But the people of York may be quite right in saying it is not 
hardy for your situation. There is not a plant in the world 
which is not quite hardy somewhere, and quite the contrary 
somewhere else ; therefore, it is of no general utility to discuss 
the hardiness of a plant in a work like The Cottage Gar¬ 
dener, which is read in all parts of the world, when the place 
November ‘J, 1858. 
for the hardy plant, or not hardy, may be like your place, for 
aught that we know, on the top of Ben Feden. Libocedrus 
Chilensis may not be hardy in your latitude, and you had better 
be guided by the statement of the York nurserymen, unless you 
choose to try for yourself.] 
PROPAGATING THE PASSION-FLOWER. 
“ Js the fruit of the blue Passion-Flower of any use, either for 
fruit or seed ? It is the shape of an egg, and about one inch and a 
half long, and quite green. IIow am I to proceed to make it 
useful ? It is trained to a south wall.”— James. 
[The fruit is of no use whatever, and pray do not inflict tl ie 
punishment of seedling Passion-Flowers on your fellow subjects, 
as they may get into the trade, and be innocently sold for flower¬ 
ing plants, while the chances are, that one of your seedlings would 
take years and years to bloom freely. A kind of Passion-Flower, 
called Tacsonia, was introduced thirty years ago. The late 
Mrs. Marriott supplied seeds of it so freely from her conservatory, 
that nurserymen did not think of increasing it otherwise ; and 
when the people all over the country sent up to London for this 
fine new climber, they had batches of the good lady’s seedlings 
sent to them. Of course, seedlings do not bloom so soon as 
grafts and cuttings do. In England, somo plants take twenty 
years to bloom from a seed, and some Passion-Flowers w ould not 
bloom even in twenty years from seed, and some might bloom 
the third or fourth year. It is all a chance.] 
“ IIow should I proceed to get a stock of Passion-Flower 
plants from a blue one which I have, several years old, which has 
thrown up suckers ? ”—A Darlington Reader. 
[Pray never increase climbers or fruit-plants from suckers. The 
like never produced the like more to the letter, than do these 
plants from suckers. Destroy all the suckers, and never again 
utter a word on the subject. It is bad enough to have teased 
one generation with seedling Passion-Flowers, without assailing 
the next generations with sucker-producing plants.] 
FORCING FOR SPRING CUTTINGS. 
“ Will you inform a subscriber the best way of forcing old 
plants for cuttings in the spring ? Also, whether plants break 
better by being put in when very small plants ? Also, have you any 
objection to tell the principle—or rather the way—the Waltonian 
Case, advertised in your columns, is heated, as the writer wishes, 
if practicable, to make one himself? A Twelvemonth’s Sub¬ 
scriber. 
[The best way to force plants in the spring, to make young 
growths for cuttings, depends upon the kind of plants. For 
instance, all the woody stove plants do best when three years old, 
and when plunged in a hotbed of dung and leaves at the beginning 
of March, to get April cuttings from. All bedding Geraniums, 
of the Horseshoe race, are best to be just one year old, and to be 
placed in a dry stove at the end of February. While Verbenas 
do best from plants which were struck last August, in a moderately 
moist stove, and so forth. Every class of plants has a special 
best time for itself. 
The principle of the Waltonian Case is the same as that by 
which tanks of water arc heated, by passing liot-water pipes 
through them. The water is the body for retaining the heat in 
both cases. The chimney from the lamp, or gas-jet, in the Wal¬ 
tonian Case must pass through a tm or zinc case full of water, 
as the hot-water pipes run through a tank. Heat a tube, or pipe, 
| with either smoke, steam, gas, water, oil, or tan, and get the tube 
or pipe through a vessel of water, and the principle is the same. 
| The water is heated by the heat of the tube, and parts with it 
slowly, and more uniformly, than from tubes. If you bend a 
one-incli iron tube, and place the bent part against the back of a 
cottage grate, or the back of the fire, and run the two legs into a 
cupboard on either side of the fire, and thero let both ends dis¬ 
charge into a can of water, on two levels,—one leg near the top, 
J and the other leg near the bottom of the can,—you can have a can 
of boiling water in your cupboard. Or have a longer pipe, so as 
to get both legs out through the wall to the garden, or sun side 
j of the house; then place the two legs in a long, flat, shallow 
j vessel, like a beer-cooler, but on two .levels, top and bottom, as in 
: the can, and the beer-cooler w ill soon be as hot, or rather the water 
