THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August U 1860. 
lias been the best here Ibis season, and the best to stand 
against their disease which has been troublesome this 
season. The Petunias hare gone—goodness knows where, 
but they are not there. 
The variegated Geraniums look uncommonly healthy, 
but with little bloom. Tom Thumb is the best of them 
all; Cerise Unique next best; then Brighton Scarlet, 
Magnum Bonum, Punch, Surprise, and Mrs. Mayler. 
The two last are very strong growers, and Mistress is to 
be discharged without a character. I have Surprise in 
the sixth generation as time from seeds as any Cape 
species whatever, and still retaining a curious trait in 
the original, six generations back. But now I can tell 
the origin of two species certain, and of three genera out 
of one species certain also. Mr. Donald put three 
distinct genera and two very distinct species growing 
upon one root into my hand— Glyce maritima variegata, 
Koniga, ditto ditto, and Alyssum maritimum —as true as 
Mare Magnum of the Romans, and as true as all of them 
came out of one seed in the garden of the rectory at Sur¬ 
biton And so you can cross the three on one flower, and 
prove superfcelation after all. No doubt of it! I have 
seen a Duchess taking down Koniga maritima from a 
large tally in a fine flower garden, and I recollect a 
housemaid and a shoemaker’s wife ready to volunteer it 
about the “ pronouncement ” of Glyce maritima variegata 
on a tally within sound of Bow bells, and I have known 
men sound as Mr. Darwin countenance such tom-foolery, 
but I never grumble myself, I only talk about it. 
The complete arrangement for the beds could not be 
effected, owing to the cold weather having destroyed so 
many of the plants ; yet the general appearance was very 
good, owing to the high keeping of the grounds and the 
artistical style of managing the beds, by which not a leaf 
seemed out of place. But a few of the beds may be stated 
as in first-rate style. The first opposite pair in front of 
the Palace were thus planted—Two rows of variegated 
Alyssum; two rows of Purple King Verbena; two rows 
of yellow Calceolarias ; two rows of Purple King again; 
two rows of variegated Alyssum ; and two rows of Tom 
Thumb. Next, and under trees, was Kingsbury Pet, 
which is a lovely thing when shaded, but will not do in 
the full sun. The Ribbon Grass and the old scarlet or 
shot-silk variegated Geranium; a good bed. Zelinda 
Dahlia, closely trained, very good, but late in flowering. 
Tom Thumb, under trees, better than in the sun. Most 
Geraniums the same. Verbenas Madeleine, Lord Rag- 
lan, and Ariosto, the best three to grow and bloom this 
season, the latter a Mulberry purple ; Madeleine, a Helio¬ 
trope colour; and Jjord Raglan, a refutation of the idea 
that a large white eye is against any bedding Verbena— 
quite the contrary, though not essential to a good bedding 
flower, as witness General Simpson, one of the best tell¬ 
ing Scarlets without an eye. The beds are about five 
yards one way and six yards the other, and I should 
think there are over three hundred of them. They must 
swallow an immensity of plants ; and in a season like this, 
when whole beds and half the beds must be filled a 
second time, the labour and anxiety must be awful 
indeed. 
There are whole beds of Perilla. All the Lobelias have 
failed more or less. Verbena pulcliella, pulchella alba, 
and the variegated forms of it are doing much better 
than the large kinds. Verbena Sabiniana, which I 
have not seen for the last twenty years, is there in mass ; 
Tweediana also. But who can hunt up teucrioides for 
me, the sweetest of them all P Mangles' Variegated 
Geranium has done well here, and everywhere I have 
been. Campanula Carpatica (blue) is one of the best 
beds under a Yew tree ; the flowers are twice the usual 
size, and in one complete mass. This, also, is first-rate 
in the shade. Lantana crocea, all but starved. Two 
hundred and fourteen yards of Geranium Brilliant in one 
straight ribbon-row, by the side of a shrubbery-bed of 
that length, were splendid ; another row on the other side 
of that bed the same, and yet there is only one bed of 
Geraniums in the whole garden ; they are all Pelargonium- 
beds, except the bed for Geranium sylvestris —a noble¬ 
looking mass when fully in bloom. The blue Geranium 
Sibirica is being prepared for such another start. Beds 
of the spring-flowering Iberis—as saxatile, sempervirens, 
and Tenoreana being all low, tidy, evergreens, are left 
undisturbed all the summer; and variegated somethings 
in flower to mix with them for the rest of the season are 
a good move. 
1 here was a mass of huge Lavender plants in the old 
Wormwood Scrub of a shrubbery in front of the Palace, 
to please the survivors of the Georgian era by rubbing it 
through their fingers and smelling them; and to bring 
down the happy idea to our days, Mr. Donald has made a 
whole bed of the prettiest little bushes of Lavender you 
ever saw, just six inches high, and from four to six inches 
through, as green as Spergula, and as tidy, and with an 
equal quantity of Bandy, or the Son. Liucy Kerr varie¬ 
gated Geraniums. This will be a model bed for such 
large places. This Hon. Lucy Kerr is a gem of a Gera¬ 
nium, and was obtained by Mr. Donald’s own industry—a 
dwarf, fine bedder, with the flowers of Cerise unique in 
miniature. He, too, is a cross-breeder, and a Darwinian 
to boot, also the best British botanist and cryptogamist 
among all our gardeners ; and he is a fossil flora collector. 
His herbarium of British plants is very nearly complete, 
and between him and the author of “ Cybele Britannica,” 
who was my surety for my first tenants, and my in¬ 
timate next-parish neighbour, I hope to be able to give 
the use and origin of all the Spergulas some of these 
days ; but I lost my chance of that acre between two 
stools. While the friends of progress were fumbling for 
their five-pound notes for me to go to market with, and 
before I had only one of them in hand, another man, 
good luck to him, stejoped in and bought up all the plants 
I looked out for the job, and jobbed me out of them as 
clean as a whistle ; and very soon you may probably see 
me in his advertisements with my thumb in my mouth, 
for I was never so completely done for. 
But I was well nigh slipping the best part of the story ; 
and now, what would you say to a bed five yards bv six 
yards full of London Pride, and Bandy Geranium, plant 
for plant ? Bandy to be taken up, of course, in October, 
and put back in May, when the London Pride is in 
feathery bloom, to screen it from the sun and glare of 
the outer world. There is a large patch of the Tom 
Thumb saved from the sports of Brilliant, which Mr. 
Donald affirms will back up one of Mr. Darwin’s origins, 
or promulgations, I forget which; but there they are, and 
also the origin of Mr. Ifinghorn’s Anne Geranium, which 
he never told us of. It is, or was a sport from Com- 
pactum superbum, and another batch of that superbum is 
on hand also; but for the origin of sport commend me to a 
far distant scene, to a precipitous-sided Highland corrie. 
D. Beaton. 
CHELONE BARBATA. 
I WONDER that none of your writers take any notice of 
Chelone barbata. It is a very graceful and ornamental plant for 
the border, and stands the winter. It should, however, to cause 
it to throw up its graceful stalk of flowers, be lifted and divided 
into little bits in the spring, when the borders are dug, and when 
the sprouts from which the stalks come can be easily distinguished. 
If allowed to stand undisturbed, it is apt not to flower; at least, 
it is so in this neighbourhood.— Kilmaenoch. 
GREENHOUSE ORCHIDS. 
(Continued from page 284.) 
On Blocks.—T o the uninitated nothing in culture seems more 
strange than that flowering plants should grow and bloom on 
dead logs of wood; and it is one of the amateur’s pleasures to 
show his friends his plants on such blocks, and to explain to 
