THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 7, 1860. 
season round London, like a naturally vigorous or healthy - 
looking bedding plant out of doors, and I was told by bis 
highness, our highest cross-breeder, that “nothing did 
grow,” under glass, down in the country. 
Lot us take the Verbenas first. I was anxious in the 
spring to make the arrangement of them in planting, as 
it is done in print in The Cottage Gaedenee, in so 
many sections, and such and such numbers out of each 
section. Also, in the same consecutive order as they are 
printed, for that is the right foundation of judging all 
kinds of plants of which there are more than three kinds 
of different colours. Well, as usual, the nurseries came 
to my help, or rather sent handsome contributions to 
make up my arrangement; and I got up fifteen ol the 
twenty or twenty-two sections into which Verbenas have 
now branched, and a considerable number of odds and 
ends of kinds ; also, some seedlings not yet proved ; and 
out of them all, as far as I can judge from present ap¬ 
pearances. I shall not be able to advance one inch or 
more this season in our knowledge of the family. And 
I want to record this before I see my rivals to-morrow 
in their new efforts for the Horticultural Society in the 
Chiswick Experimental. I have two good reasons for 
this ; the first is, the awful pulling at the ears which the 
conditions of the Verbenas all over this part of the king¬ 
dom will occasion to many a good gardener, who will 
have all the blame for what no mortal can or could guard 
against. There is no one to blame in the matter: we are 
all in the same boat, and our pride ought thus to be 
lowered from time to time, as, of all the people of the 
world, those in the flower gardens of this country arc 
most apt to forget that the whole praise is not due to 
them and to them alone. But to go and blame and turn 
your gardener adrift because he could not fight against 
Nature, is, perhaps, the greatest folly of all our blindness 
of heart. 
The second reason shows the folly I have just been 
railing against in my own self. My pride of heart would 
never allow me to plough with another man s heifer, 
much less with the milk cows of the Horticultural 
Society; and, although I willingly and with heart and 
hand joined the Eloricultural Committee, it was not for 
the purpose of making bread and cheese out of our pro¬ 
ceedings. We all pay our own expenses, our Society is 
not yet out of the bog, or able to spend one farthing more 
than they can help ; and it would look just as bad for me 
to write about all our doings, and thus suck the goodness 
out of the reports of our doings before they are sent into 
the world by the Society in their own “ Proceedings.” I 
say it would look as paltry as for a man or woman to 
blame a good gardener, or all gardeners, for the effects 
of a bad season, of which none of us yet know the full 
consequences. Everything is down with me but my credit, 
owing to the effects of this season on my seedlings. They 
will not grow, and I cannot make them, neither can I get 
rid of my gardener, for I am my own man. 
Talk about crossing, indeed! and I shall tell you a 
secret. I once knew" a gentleman, a great patron of 
gardening, and he was of a hasty temper. His gardener 
knew the exact degree at which the heat of his master s 
blood stood by the time he (the master) spent with the 
bees of a morning before they met each other. The 
gardener had pluck and patience; but he, too, could be 
put up to the boiling-point; and he knew it, and strived 
against it. And the best remedy he ever found to cool 
and quiet him was to cross some flower or another ; and 
the more intricate he found the parts, the more effectual 
and speedy the remedy. And it is more likely than not 
that, like our Mrs. Grundy, every one of us has his own 
or her favourite pursuit for reducing the heat of the 
blood at times down to “ temperateand if so, there 
never was more need of indulging in that exercise than 
there is and will be this season. Let us all do it and be 
thankful. 
But talking about crosses and cross-breeding brings 
the pleasant kind of grumbling to one’s mind—such as 
“H. C. M.” puts on record in the last number of The 
Cottage Gardener, page 271. People wondered how 
on earth I could get fat on grumbling, but nothing feeds 
faster or more sure when one knows how to chew it— 
there is where the only secret lies. Suppose, for instance, 
that I had to look over every volume and page of The 
Cottage Gaedenee the day I am writing this, in order 
to make out a list of all the bedding G-eraniums, Ver¬ 
benas, Calceolarias, and the rest of the bed and border 
plants of this stud book, in order to refresh the memory, 
and be sure that no old thing should pass as new on the 
morrow before the Eloral Committee. Suppose, also, 
this to be the last day in the week on which I could write 
this article, so as to make sure of its looking spicy in 
print. Which of the two should you suppose must go to 
the wall?—and no mortal could read twenty volumes of 
The Cottage Gaedenee, and think and write one, two, 
or three columns of matter in one day. Now, a nice feed 
of grumbling would be just the very thing for a day like 
this. Instead of making faces at it, down with it as fast 
as one can get it off the pen; and by the time your space 
is full you would feel as comfortable as I shall do when 
all this is down. 
“ H. C. M.” is a godsend, as it happens; and if god¬ 
sends like him would come every such day, and fill as 
much as he will, why one’s nose would soon get too flat 
and full for the spectacles. 
“ D. C. M.” asks the reason why there are not as many 
hardy cross-bred Heaths between natives and foreign 
kinds as there are hardy Bhododendrons between hardy 
and exotic kinds. The reason why that has not been 
done is exactly the same as the reason why Tom Thumb 
was so much less than Barnum. Can “ D. C. M.” tell 
why Barnum was the bigger of the two? No. And 
none can tell him why Cape Heaths do not cross with 
our natives. We know only the fact; the reason for it 
is beyond our apprehension. But native Heaths will not 
cross among themselves except to a very limited extent, 
while there is hardly a limit to the power for interbreeding 
among the Cape kinds. The Cape Heaths were among 
the very first plants that were crossed in England; and 
scores of kinds are down in our best books and catalogues 
as species from the Cape, and were ushered into the world 
as such, while in reality they were merely English cross¬ 
bred seedlings ; and many of the best Heaths in culti¬ 
vation have had that origin and none other. 
But it may be worth while for “ D. C. M.” to know 
the reason why Bhododendrons, Azaleas, and Bhodoras 
are not increased by budding as fast as Boses are. The 
reason is, that the bark of Bhododendrons is so much 
thinner and the growth more slow for budding than in 
the Boses ; for the one will bud just as well as the other, 
and just as long in the season, or say from the 1st of June 
to the last of September. As far back as the year 1843 
I put it on record that “ how ” a friend of mine down at 
Newcastle had one day met a friend, a lady, going out 
into the garden, or out of the garden, with a handful of 
new Bhododendron shoots, which she was going to bud 
on the top shoots of the old plants of older kinds; and 
she expressed astonishment that a great gun like him at 
gardening should not know how easy it was to change 
the face of a shrubbery of Bhododendrons as she was 
changing that of her father’s garden by degrees, and as 
fast as she could procure suitable kinds to work on the 
old ones. 
The next turn may be grumbled at or not, as far as 
feeding goes; but Bhododendrons have been so fed and 
overfed this season, that if we should have a fine, warm 
autumn, as no doubt we shall, hundreds of them will 
push past the flower-buds, for next, and run them up to 
wood growth instead, making two fair chances against 
blooming next year—first, in running into autumn wood ; 
and, secondly, in the chance of frost hurting the un¬ 
ripened wood. If I had an acre of hybrid Bhododen- 
