113 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND Ci 
liiay have a variety as well as colour at the same price, 
selections are far more thrifty to have than many of one 
or two kinds. These kinds grow just as well in England, 
from year to year, as they do in Holland, and the offsets 
of all of them should be kept, and a few more kinds 
brought in every year. The next best double ones are 
La Candeur, which is much used at the Crystal Palace, 
Gloria Solis, Manage de ma Fille, Lord Wellington, 
Conqueror, and Yellow Lose, and a few others. 
By-the-by, speaking of the Crystal Palace Tulips, 
except these double ones, the rest are really not worth 
the trouble of planting them. They are all of them of 
the flimsiest of the florists’ strain, without one single re¬ 
deeming point of the older strains ; and people who take 
up their notions of spring-bedding Tulips from what they 
see at Sydenham, would not be very sanguine in recom¬ 
mending this branch of gardening. 
The next thing that struck me at the Wellington Eoad 
Nursery was the immediate adoption as soon as pub¬ 
lished of Mr. Standish’s tiffany-houses, for the pro¬ 
tection and growth of half-hardy and nearly hardy plants 
of all kinds. Mr. Standish has done a vast deal of good 
in trying and making known his experiments on this 
cheap and excellent mode of protection. His article on 
Myosotidium nobile, at page 104, will also be of the greatest 
service. One might lose half a fortune before discovering 
the proper treatment of that noble Forget-me-not. It is, 
indeed, one of the very first for specimen plants in the 
country. He sent two noble specimens of it to the 
meeting of the Floral Committee of the Horticultural 
Society, and the whole of the members were unanimous 
in their special recommendation of it; and if you believe 
me, I was astonished to meet with such a host of practical 
experience in the composition of that Committee. They 
did not black-ball me at the voting, and I shall bo proud 
to meet and sit with such practical and independent 
spirits, who, by-and-by, when they get sufficient room to 
spread out their feathers, must be considered the right 
wing of the Horticultural Society, if not the main pinions 
of British progress in the floral world. 
But about these tiffany-houses. The first experiment 
at this Nursery is 47 feet long, 24 feet wide, and 8 feet 
high in the centre, span-roofed, of course, and 4 feet high 
at the sides. The posts for the side and end-walls are 
five or six feet apart, with a board nailed against them 
at top and bottom, the bottom-board resting on a single 
row of bricks placed on the surface. The ridge is sup¬ 
ported by two posts only, the rafters rest on "the side- 
posts and on the ridge, and then the whole is covered 
with tiffany, as Mr. Standish directs, and masters and [ 
men are equally well pleased with the result. I think J 
the carpenter of the firm and two helps put up that ' 
house in one day ; at all events this is the right structure 
to harden off the bedding plants of the three kingdoms 
from the 1st of April, and it could be put up over the 
fruit against the walls of the kitchen garden, to save the 
bloom at the same time, and thus kill two birds with one 
stone. With the sides vmcovered after bedding out, all 
ordinary plants will grow under it better than under 
glass uncovered, and it would be the best place to cross 
all kinds of bedding plants, and particularly Geraniums. 
But I have so many things on hand just now, that 
unless I put some of them on the shelf I must part them; 
and as it would not look just the thing not to tell of our 
Floral Committee from tlie first start, I shall part the 
rest of the notes on the Nursery till next week, and give 
my maiden speech on this right wing of the Horticul¬ 
tural Society. There was a strong muster of members, 
probably to see how the young lions, just caught, would 
feed and look in a poking little room not big enough 
to grow Cucumbers for a respectable family. Mr. King- 
horn, the great cross-breeder, and Mr. Salter, the florist, I 
were amongst the fresh blood; and if we can give as much 
confidence to the Britishers as Mr. Salter’s long ex¬ 
perience abroad is sure to give on the other side of the 
'UNTRY GENTLEMAN, May 22, 1860. 
water, no matter how soon we shall be in the new rooms 
and offices at Kensington Gore, for depend upon it we 
shall draw both sides after us there by degrees. Hitherto 
a large number of the country party thought this Floral 
Committee was altogether for florists’ flowers and new 
plants from abroad, and, therefore, took very little interest 
in it. Another party often regretted, in my hearing, that 
“ even should new plants and new seedlings be judged by 
such a Committee, they will be judged by the rules of the 
florist: therefore, no flower-garden plant, or shrubbery 
plant, or rock plant, or block plant, or water, or marsh, 
or wilderness plant will have any chance there.” No 
such thing. The Judges or the members of Committee 
are selected as they were of old at Chiswick, where 
fifteen Judges, for the fifteen years that I was on the 
circuit, were divided into five sections, each section to 
judge the plants which that section was known to know 
best. Once, indeed, when the Doctor was pushed for 
men, he put me, or asked me, to act with Mr. Frost, of 
Dropmore, and Mr. Wells, of Kedleaf, on the florists’ 
productions ; and I told him, in the presence of the twelve 
Judges, that he might just as well send me down to Bir¬ 
mingham with that very stout man in the next tent— 
Ibrahim Pacha, from Egypt; for we heard he was going 
there that afternoon, and there it ended; and that is 
just how we shall do it at the Floral Committee. If his 
conscience tells one of us that he is not a fair Judge on 
that plant or that collection of plants, he will hold his 
tongue, say nought, but sit, hear, and learn from what 
the knowing ones are saying, just as one of you might ; 
and when it comes to the show of hands he will push his 
into his pocket, and be as if it had not been. Therefore, 
everybody, or every set of bodies all over the three king¬ 
doms, will have fair judgment and sound practical know¬ 
ledge, without a particle of prejudice bestowed upon their 
seedlings, or newly-introduced plants, and upon high 
cultivation. A plant, or two, or ten plants, no matter 
how common, if grown above the common run at the 
Shows, will be sure to get our prizes and highest com¬ 
mendations. And let me tell you, for I know what it 
will come to, that if I were a young gardener now with 
my present experience I would rather choose so many 
“ Commendations ” from this Floral Committee to back 
my character for getting into a better situation than 
the best written character from the first nobles in 
England. Eecollect, ordinary plants must be better than 
we see them at the London Shows before they will be 
thus commended, otherwise we should come in compe¬ 
tition with the ordinary exhibitions. But the great field 
for the trial of strength in growth is in the old and for¬ 
gotten plants of the last half century. Hundreds of as 
good plants as one sees now-a-days have been lost, or 
let out of mind, since I remember, and some of the finest 
plants in the world have never yet been seen at a Show. 
Did you ever see Lueulia aratissima, a large bush in a 
No. 6-pot, with forty-five heads of bloom as large as 
Hydrangea heads, and every flower as sweet and sweeter 
than a Violet, with the blush of pudibundv.s on them? 
You did not—at a Show, at all events ; but the thing was 
done, and can be yet performed. Just do it, and get a 
first-rate prize and character for doing it next Christmas; 
or, if you liko it better, choose any of the autumn or 
spring-flowering plants, and retard the one or force the 
other, so as to bo in to decorate Christmas festivities, 
and my word for it, you will not go without your re¬ 
ward ; and as to seedlings, they will be sure of being 
judged by the rules for the classes they represent, and 
by none other. 
On that occasion the best things before us were two 
specimens of the Antarctic Forget-me-not, from Mr. 
Standish, with five, six, or seven spikes of bloom well up 
above the foliage, something after the looks of a Statice 
at a Show ; a collection of mixed plants from the Wel¬ 
lington Eoad Nursery; of mixed Auriculas from Mr. 
Turner, of Slough; of mixed Verbenas from Mr. Kings. 
