142 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, June 8, 1858. 
seeds out of doors, Langs upon tliat one sentence, 
“ sufficient nourishment and room.” The difficulty is, 
to know the right degree of nourishment. What is a 
j right degree of strength and richness in a soil for a 
given plant, in one place, might be too much or too 
little, for the selfsame plant, in another place; and the 
degrees vary in the same place with the variations of 
the season. It is not a high degree of scientific skill 
j which makes a man or woman a successful flower 
i gardener, so much as a long practice in one place or 
j situation. But, on the other hand, a long practice on 
one set of tools, so to speak, renders the most scientific 
as helpless as the practical on a change of these tools, 
or circumstances. 
The worst part of the old practice, which passes 
unnoticed, at the present day, is that which relates to 
seedlings —from the Cabbage to the Mignonette. The 
seedlings are left too long unthinned ; and one might 
; leave a bed of seedling Petunias a week over the 
proper time, on account of company coming to see the 
garden next week; and some seedlings are never 
thinned at all. How often do you see a beautiful row 
of NemopJiila going off, all in a hurry, or not one 
cpnarter so good as you have seen them formerly, or in 
other places ! The seedlings were never thinned out, 
and that is the worst part of our present practice, as 
I have just said. 
I would always sow thick, and plant thick, if I was 
sure to have the law in my own hands, to make sure 
I of a speedy bed; but if the after thinning is to be left 
to a second party, ten to one if it is not left too long 
undone, and some of it will never be done at all. But, 
at the present moment, I have a bed of ten thousand 
seedlings of one kind of new plant—a spring flower, a 
yellow bedding Poly anthus—said. you could not put a 
pin’s point between any two of them. They are just 
“ as thick as grass,” but they are so purposely. They 
belong to a large class of colonisers—seedlings which 
will transplant in lumps, and do well—and I hold it to 
be true economy to sow all such as thick as they will 
stand, to save room, and to divide them, as soon as 
they can be handled, into colonies of so many in the 
batch ; to divide them again and again as they grow 
up, till at last you have them in groups of four or five, 
as the white Petunias aforesaid, or singly, if that is 
more desirable. 
The reason for my thick sowing was the want of 
more room, and the want of knowing whether this 
Polyanthus might, or might not, come true from seeds, 
xf not true, it will be of no use t.o me, as we have the 
best collection of Polyanthuses in the three kingdoms, 
at the Experimental. A large packet of seeds, from 
Mr. Smith, of Harwich, who advertised his superior 
| collection in The Cottage Gardener, added only two 
I kinds which we had not before his seedlings bloomed; 
but his seeds and his kinds were really good, and, if 
the ten thousand seedlings should turn out to be true 
to the parent stock, it will not be one too many. 
Another bed of “the Doctor’s” was edged with 
i Flower of the Fay Geranium, and the inside filled 
with concentric rings of China Asters, in shades of 
colour. Well, to have this bed, one would need a 
little patience ; but there is no such a thing as patience 
m a real flower garden at all. Talk of having such a 
thing in a week or two, and you may as well talk of 
having it when people are dead and gone ; have it on 
the instant, or say nothing about it. Therefore, in 
providing for this bed at the Experimental, I see they 
have filled the inside with two-year-old seedlings of 
Delphinium formosum, whicli were in flower-bud at 
the time They say they will have the “flush” of 
the Delphiniums first; and, when that is over, they will 
cut it down to the ground, take it up, and replant it 
m the reserve ground, where it will throw up again for 
cut blooms in October. The time of cutting it will 
depend on the summer, and the progress of the Asters. 
The Asters will be grown on a piece of good, open 
soil, till the blossom-buds are formed; and any time 
after that, till they are in full bloom, will do to plant 
them into the flower-bed; and, in the mean time, 
another crop is being had off the same bed. 
The new system of planting promenade beds at the 
Crystal Palace, mentioned last week, would not answer 
if the beds were in groups, as before the large con¬ 
servatory at Hew ; but it will look extremely pretty, 
and be very novel as it is, and quite in keeping with 
that style of bedding. The fact is, were it not for the 
intervening circular beds, the oblong beds along the 
bottom of the centre part of the terrace would be a 
ribbon on a grand scale, or rather a scarlet sash with 
a purple stripe down each side of it. The Tom Thumb 
Geraniums occupy these beds in five rows, from end 
to end, no edging being across the ends ; and a foot 
of purple Verbenas on each side. But, in this style, 
the back-row edging need not to be of the same colour 
as the front-row edging; if the one was dark purple, 
the other might be of white Verbena, and that de¬ 
parture would give a better effect. As there is no con¬ 
nection across the ends, the edgings are not edgings to 
the beds, but stripes, for setting off the richness of the 
ground colour. But, as I said before, the arrangement 
should not be attempted in the grouping system, of 
which there is no example to refer to at the Crystal 
Palace, the whole there, being in the simplest style of 
the art of flower-gardening. There is no grouping at 
Hampton Court Gardens, only the promenade system. 
The grouping at Kew is round the large conservatory, 
and one group of beds in front of the old Museum;— 
and that group in front of the old Museum should never 
be altered, because it is the only good specimen we 
have in our public gardens, of a very bad design, 
which no man can ever plant properly, because it is 
impossible to plant it without looking like a pig with 
one ear;—and we can refer to it as a good specimen of 
that system, and, as such, will be just as good to learn 
from as it would be from the best modelperhaps 
better. r 
Pound London the weather for “planting out ” was 
most propitious ; dripping and heavy rains alternating 
with.warm, sunshiny weather. Many whole gardens 
required no after-watering, and now, on the 1st of 
June, there is ample promise of an early and lasting 
display of bloom. 
The May meetings did not present much novelty 
for the flower garden, but in June we expect many 
fine seedlings from the crossing labours of last year. 
Variegated Geraniums will soon be as numerous as 
the Horseshoe class. Ondine is yet the best blue 
V erbena we have had at the Experimental Garden. 
Visitors to Kew may look out for a bed of a Noseqay 
Geranium, new to the Londoners : the one which was 
called Sanguineum there last year. 
It is somewhat strange, that, after offering handsome 
prizes for Nosegay Geraniums at the Crystal Palace 
oliows, they should plant so few of that breed out in 
the gaf Jen. They have gone no farther yet than the 
ii ^ ln/c .f ose 9 a y’ while in the Experimental we use 
all the old ones, and some new seedlings. A bed 
with Mrs. Vernon in the centre, with the old Crimson 
Nosegay round, and to be edged with Jackson s Va¬ 
riegated Nosegay, would beat any other Geranium 
bed which they could muster, either at Kew or the 
CrystM I alace ; and yet I used the first two at Shrub- 
land lark twelve or fifteen years back; and the San¬ 
guineum of Kew I threw out in 1854, as not good 
enough for my stock ; but still it is a most excellent 
bedder in that style of flower. 
Mr. lish spoke of Alma —the variegated Alma— 
