20S 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, July 3, 1860. 
possess, after receiving all, or almost all, tlie bedding 
Geraniums which the friends of order, economy, and 
decoration could muster up and send to him; and that 
No. 50 is this now called the Crystal Palace Scarlet, 
according to the only authority we have on that subject 
—the garden “ stud book,” of which I have been the 
registrar for the last twenty years. 
It was very singular that I should be the first to hunt 
it out according to the book. I saw it in 1858 among 
Tom Thumbs and others on the top of the Rose Mount at 
the Crystal Palace, just as the Crystal Palace people 
were beginning to find out its superiority over Tom 
Thumb. I told lately who brought it to the Crystal 
Palace, and how it came to be called Trentham Scarlet, 
also that I sent it to Trentham. Mr. Fleming himself 
told me long since that none of my seedlings suited the 
climate and soil of Trentham, but that they were useful 
for him to help him in crossing with other kinds to raise 
seedlings fitted for that peculiar locality ; aud in 1856 I 
Worked in that information in Tun Cottage Gardener, 
Vol. XVI., page 881, after this fashion :—“ Col. Leveson 
is the best pink or rosy pink Lady Middleton, Trentham 
Pose, and before Le Titian; Trentham Pose being Lady 
Middleton with a dwarfer habit. Trentham Pose of 1855 
(not the original), is of the same close habit, with more 
red in the flower—two excellent kinds for such heavy or 
wet soil aud climate as those of Trentham ; and Trentham 
Scarlet, 1856, is the best bright scarlet flower I ever set 
my eye on, with exactly the same dwarf habit as the 
Trentham Pose, and all from my own model-habited kind, 
named after Lady Middleton, reduced in strength to suit 
Trentham Gardens. This is the kind of practical know¬ 
ledge we stand so much in need of at the present day. 
Tell me your soil, subsoil, elevation, climate, and county, 
and your taste in colour, and I shall produce you a kind 
of Geranium to suit. That is exactly what Mr. Fleming 
has been aiming at since we put up our horses together 
ten or a dozen years back.” 
At the planting out of 1856, I had every Geranium 
from Mr. Fleming which he thought was worth trying 
in the Experimental, and his Trentham Scarlet, 1856, he 
told me, in a letter now before me, was a seedling proved 
in 1855. “ It is muck admired here,” he said, “ and I 
want your candid opinion of it. The habit is low and 
spreading, the flowers numerous, and very attractive. It 
is quite a new shade of scarlet.” And I repeat that it is 
the best bright scarlet flower I ever set my eyes on. It 
is still the favourite scarlet with the “ Queen is coming,” 
the good lady who owns the Experimental Garden ; and 
we managed this season to get up tw r o matched beds of it 
for her queenship, and opposite to the match pair, and in 
the centre between them stands a bed of the true Shrub- 
land Dwarf alias Trentham Scarlet at the Crystal Palace, 
which is of the Frogmore breed, like Tom Thumb, and is 
as different from the Trentham Scarlet as any Geranium 
in the kingdom. 
The Secretaries of the Floricultural and Pomological 
Committees, the Curator Mr. Eyles, and two or three 
of the bedding gentlemen of their suite, will be invited 
down next August, to see these beds in the Experi¬ 
mental and judge for the Horticultural. Here, then, 
is one practical instance out of many of the value 
and necessity of registering fine things. The value is 
in the record, for others to order the same things, and 
the necessity is to prevent careless observers from pass¬ 
ing off spurious things on the public for the fine things 
themselves. 
Take the last instance iu our office for another turn 
of the die. A gentleman from the East Lotkians sends 
to us to know if the Crystal Palace plant were the same 
as the Lmproved Frogmore. He was told by a most re¬ 
spectable London firm that it was so; and I wrote to 
seven of that class who were the most likely to possess it. 
I ordered half a dozen plants of it from each of them ; 
and I told them all round, that I should pay them for the 
plants when ray ship came home. Bat in that boisterous 
weather they all dreaded a shipwreck round some Cape 
or other, and they refused to trust me with the plants 
if they had them. But the truth is, and we must abide 
by it, the Shrubland Dwarf, with all its aliases, as far ns 
I can make oat, was never in the nurseries at all till this 
spring. There is one nurseryman, however, down near 
Birmingham, Mr. .T. Cole, of the firm of Cole and Sharp, 
I believe, and if ever a nurseryman has had it, he is the 
most likely to be the man. Mr. Cole managed the Crystal 
Palace plant for me in 1844, 1845, and 1840. In 1845 he 
dogged out every plant I had of Tom Thumb, to make 
room for No. 50, just as the Crystal Palace people have 
done fifteen years afterwards. He was a very clever 
man, and had more power given him than any other 
foreman who was there before or after him ; and if ho is 
alive now he will recollect his prophesying that “ the day 
would come in the which No. 50 would drive Tom out of 
all first-rate gardens.” Mr. Cole contended that “ Tom 
was too long in the arms ever to make a good vase plant, ’ 
meaning that the footstalks of the flowers were too long 
for architectural symmetry. When he left me he took lots 
of cuttings of his favourite scarlet with him ; but what he 
did with them, or with himself, I could never fathom, 
only that I heard that he is in business as above for him¬ 
self ; and if he has got this Geranium still he will make a 
fortune by it, and 1 hope I shall be free from any more 
writing about it. 
No one has ever had a leaf ofthe true Trentham Scarlet 
out of the Experimental. It is, therefore, just as valuable 
now as the first day I had it, and no one shall ever get it 
out of my hands till I have Mr. Fleming’s permission. 
That was the rule from the beginning of the Experimental. 
The true Trentham Scarlet is a much better bedding 
plant for some people than the Crystal Palace plant; but 
it does not make such a mass of bloom, or show so well 
at a distance. Wherever Tom Thumb, Paron Hvgel, 
JLarlcaway, Dazzle, or Poyal Dwarf, and such-like kinds 
go too miich to leaf in the autumn, the Trentham Scarlet 
is just the right sort of plant, and it is the finest scarlet- 
flower in all the Geraniums, though not the best bedder. 
I have filed every scrap of writing anent the Experi¬ 
mental Garden ; and I shall let the Editors have a private 
sight of all the correspondence between Mr. Fleming and 
myself about these our best seedlings, in order to “ get 
up and bar the door ” against “ those wha ha’ wi’ 
Wallace bled” (not). 
i One nurseryman from Derbyshire asks me also where 
he can get Lady Agnes Pyng Geranium, the best of the 
! Lmproved Frog mores ; and I forgot to tell him in my letter 
that Mr. Salter, the great Cucumber grower of Ipswich, 
and Mr. Jeffries who raised the Lady Middleton Verbena, 
both grew and sold it when I was down there, and it was 
preferred to Tom Thumb by many people round Ipswich 
at that time. 
When I was in correspondence with Mr. Fleming 
about his Trentham Scarlet and his, or Patrick’s Crimson 
\ Nosegay, he told me he had seen another scarlet in Kent, 
which was the best bedder he had seen to that time. 
The name was Beckenham Scarlet. I never could get 
that kind to the Experimental; but some one had ex- 
; hibited a fine specimen-plant of it at one of the Crystal 
' Palace Shows, and it is booked somewhere in The 
Cottage Gardener since 1856. 
That finishes my share of the present movement about 
rival beauties, and it fulfils the requirements of the stud 
book, which I shall not part with as long as I write 
about flowers. “ The first in a village rather than aught 
else,” except being his Holiness the Pope himself in Home, 
being and having been my motto since I read of it as the 
motto of a llomau Emperor. I want to clear up, arrange, 
and register everything worthy of the fame of the stud 
book up to 1860, and to hand the information over at the 
end of the season to Mr. Eyles, who will succeed me in 
registering the good, the better and the best, of all 
