191 
TIIE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, June 26, 1860. 
■which strikes me as the best form of charity I ever yet 
heard of by a wealthy great man for the benefit of his 
poor dependents; for, with the exception of the head 
gardener and two or three foremen, the whole of the 
men employed in the garden are from the neighbouring 
villages. 
A clergyman from below Bristol planted out some 
Begonia Rex on the 8th of last May, and they are looking 
well; and he tells that he heard that the great Bose 
growers of Berlchampstead, the Messrs. Lane, had beds of 
Begonias out last year, and Rex among the rest; and I 
have said a real bedding Begonia was out in the Ex¬ 
perimental, and did well till that severe frost in October. 
These are all the actuals on my books ; but the Sama¬ 
ritans have poured in lots of Begonias to the Experi¬ 
mental, and Rex, Nebulosa, Grandis, Regina, Rollissonii, 
and Griflitliii, are now planted out there fresh from the 
packing-hampers. And what would you think were sent 
for new edging—goodness knows for what, but they, too, 
are planted, edged, and hedged as best we could ? Lots 
and lots of little tiny Adiantum cuneatum, in peculiar- 
bottomed No. 60-pots ; and of all the pretty little things 
you ever saw spangled with dew drops, none could be 
really prettier than these cunecitums after the rain. But 
none of the fairy Caladium argyrites came in, and very 
probably they are not yet burdened with too many of 
them down in Samaria; but we shall have them by-and- 
by, for of all other things, they are the prettiest things for 
edgings to formal and genuine beds of Elegantissimuses, 
to coin a new word for that for which we have not 
another. 
But stop a bit. I have a Paris print now before me 
of two new Caladiums, and one of them will match Mr. 
Low’s Caladium from before the flood — Lis Colocasia 
meiallica, which is a Caladium, all but the name and 
the botany of the thing; the match will be in strong 
opposite contrast. Mctallica is of a violet-purple 
bronze all over the huge and the tiuy leaves of that 
plant. Belleymei or Caladium Belleymei has the leaf 
long and more sagittate, or more arrow-head-like, and 
more narrow than those of the old Caladium bicolor. 
All the blade-part of the leaf is white as snow, with a 
norrow strip along the margin or edge, and all the veins 
as green as Leeks, with a little flush of pudibundus in 
the centre of the leaf. This is the most conspicuous of 
all the variegated plants yet discovered, and will hold 
the same position, or match, among variegated plants as 
Colocasia metallica will occupy among fine-foliaged kinds. 
It is corning out directly from M. Chantin, of Paris ; and 
I owe for the first account of it to an American gentle¬ 
man from New York—one who has just made a clean 
sweep of all the best new plants in London and Paris, 
taking off all my “ Good Gracious ” things from the 
Wellington Boad Nursery, and all the old things before 
the flood, and the new after, from the Clapton Nursery; 
together with all the curiositates from Chantin’s eta- 
blissement in Paris. 
Caladium Baraguinii is also a new one, more after the 
fashion of bicolor' in the same collection. When all these 
new things get too big for one’s room, the best way is 
to do with them as the late Mr. McNab did with his 
over-grown specimens from all the hothouses—plant 
them out of doors in June, and let the frost of next 
winter finish them. Once that system is adopted by any 
one, either from choice or curiosity, he or she can never 
give it up again ; for the thing gives such an entire 
change to some parts of one’s garden or pleasure-grounds, 
as to appear quite a slice from some favourite retreat in 
the tropics ; and visitors take such interest in all tilings 
which appear very different from the usual run of things, 
that one is kept constantly on the look out for fit sub¬ 
jects for the “ exotic garden.” I was inoculated with 
this turn by seeing over the wall of the Experimental 
Garden, inEdinburgh, into the exotic groves in the Botanic 
Garden by Mr. McNab, and I could never get rid of it. 
I made some useful bUmders in it long ago, when I 
thought that botany was the best part of plants, and 
decoration with them a mere namby-pamby fancy ; when, 
in fact, if any one had spoken to me seriously about Pelar¬ 
goniums, Geraniums, and “ them ” sort of things, I should 
have turned up my nose, and considered myself a much- 
insulted gentleman. But my blunders with exotic beds 
and borders were even then worth seeing. The Doctor 
used to come and see them ; Sir William Hooker and 
Sir Joseph Paxton the same. I vouch for it that those 
three great men never suspected a blunder at all in all 
my beds. Try them now, however, and see how this 
world has changed for the last thirty years. Each of 
them can, at the present day, discuss mauve colour with 
a court milliner, and ribbon lines with the elite of her 
patrons, and even decry a grove of botany, or exotic 
fancies out of doors, if they were an inch out of place. 
The ruling passion prompted me to speak of bedding 
Begonias ; but is it all right with them, and such as they ? 
It is no such thing, they were never made for bedding on 
the principles of the present day. But there is a place for 
everything, even in the smallest garden ; and the grand 
secret of successful decoration is, like the grand secret of 
dressing for court, to have everything in the right place 
and in the right character. 
Upon that principle all the fancy-leaved Begonias 
would be in place and character in and about all manner 
of fancy rock work, rustic work, root work, knoll work, 
mound work, on the sides and banks of running rivulets, 
and on all places above the eye, as you pass the recesses 
in the wilderness of pleasure-grounds, or anywhere that 
would place them between the eye and the sky line. 
Then, if you want to make the best, of their peculiar 
purple tints, have masses of some blue flowers near them. 
But when seen from under the eve—that is, their upper 
surfaces are seen only, no blue, or yellow, or scarlet must 
be near them, or it is worse than murder ; and no more 
than half a dozen of any one sort of them slioidd be 
planted together in such places and for such purposes as 
the above. But for neutral beds in regirlar terrace 
gardens a mass of one sort would probably tell better 
than a mass of mixed sorts—at least I think so ; but it is 
difficult to determine such things without trial experi¬ 
ments on purpose. 
If flowering Begonias will ever be fit for real bedding, 
they must be had from crossing with the naturally per¬ 
petual-flowering kinds, of which Breggii or parviflora 
should be the mother parent for some generations, that 
being the best-habited for bedding of all the family. The 
one which was used last year in the Experimental Garden 
is nearly as dwarf as Breggii and as free a bloomer, and 
blooms from May to the frost in the autumn with the 
usual red of the family. It is a cross, ten years of age, 
and grown out of doors in summer all the time by its 
author, the king of all the British cross-breeders, from 
whom I select the following, which will meet the wants 
and wishes of some of our readers :— 
“ I have the white Anemone apennina, which some folks 
do not believe in, and many pale shades from its seeding 
in a mass with the blue. I found it in the ruins of 
Hadrian’s villa at Albano. I cannot imagine Brilliant 
a sport from Tom Thumb, the colour is so different.” 
But I took the real Tom Thumb from a sport of Brilliant 
with this hand; and Mr. Donald, of the Hampton Court 
Garden, has done a similar turn to my knowledge. Other 
cases are also authenticated. But Bandy from Grossu- 
laricefolia, and Tady Plymouth from suaveolens, are 
greater departures from the type ; to say nothing of the 
Golden Chain from Inquinans, and a crimson flower, of 
which scores are in my possession, from the original scarlet 
Horseshoe, as vouched for by Miller. His majesty goes 
on to say, “ I have just got a cross up from Canna iridi- 
flora, by my beautiful Warczetviczii cross. The seedlings 
show the colour of leaf of the male parent. This will be 
the finest of all the garden Cannas. My gems of the 
