THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, August 14, 1860. 
more virulent than ever. The winter destroyed almost all my 
Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, and even Savoy and Scotch Kale. 
My Bays are cut down almost to the ground. Arbutus unedo is 
a good deal injured, some of the branches are dead, but others 
are not much hurt. They have formed shoots which are already, 
perhaps, three or four inches long. I have but one Laurustinus, 
and that is not much cut; but then it is in a sheltered situation, 
protected by an Apple tree. Broad-leaved Alaternus very little 
hurt. Broad-leaved Phyllirea not at all hurt. Cypress (Oupressus 
sempervirens) not much more injured than it sometimes is in 
ordinary winters. My Laurels havo suffered scarcely at all; 
but I see that in some of my neighbours’ gardens they ate very 
much cut. Cotoneaster rigidus very much injured; but I see 
that it is breaking from some parts of the old wood. Did the 
shrubs suffer from the hard frost of December, or from the un¬ 
seasonable frost of October ? I think not improbably from the 
latter, in consequence of the sap being still in motion at that 
time; and I have known winter frosts more severe than that of 
December, which did very little harm to shrubs, which last year 
suffered severely. The preceding summer, too, was so warm that 
the wood must have been well ripened. I have a Cedar of 
Lebanon which is, perhaps, about forty years old from seed; 
this year a great many of the tufts turned brown, and, in fact, 
died very soon after they came out in the spring, and the leaves 
which formed these tufts have fallen off, or are falling off, as the 
leaves of deciduous trees fall in autumn. Still the tree seems to 
be tolerably healthy, as new wood of the length of several inches 
has shot from the extremities of a great many of the boughs. I 
shall be much obliged to any contributor to the pages of The 
Cottage Gardener who will account for this phenomenon. 
Is Veratrum viride a common plant ? I have it. I believe that 
V. album is sent out from some nurseries under the name of 
V. viride. V. viride is a noble plant, it attains to the height of, 
I think, eight or nine feet; the leaf is large and handsome, but 
not plicate like that of V. nigrum; the flowers are of a very 
bright green, and concave, they grow in panicles. — Edwd. 
Simons, Ovington , Watton, Norfolk. 
OUR COMMON FLOWERS. 
I HAVE witnessed with pleasure the increasing desire on the 
part of our cottagers to become acquainted with the double va¬ 
rieties of some of our British wild flowers. If the following 
notes stir up a similar desire in the readers of The Cottage 
Gardener my end will be attained. 
Lotus corniculatus plena is one of our cottagers’ favourites. 
Those readers of The Cottage Gardener to whom it is a 
stranger will easily know it when I inform them that it is the 
double variety of the common Bird’s-foot Trefoil, one of the 
favourite wild flowers of my childhood. It is a plant well 
worthy of a place in the front of the mixed border. Some plants 
of it in a garden not far from my residence, are truly beautiful. 
It is as hardy as its wild progenitor, and easily propagated by 
division. 
Another favourite, and one well worthy of all the care be¬ 
stowed upon it, Spircea filipendula plena, the double variety of 
the common Dropwort of our pastures. A truly ornamental 
border flower ; its feather-like flowers are much esteemed in 
cottagers’ bouquets, and possess a beauty which is rarely to be 
found in some more esteemed favourites. It may be called an 
evergreen, for its Eern-like root-leaves rarely die down in winter; 
but with me in a cold, bleak, situation, it turns brown in winter, 
but soon comes round in early spring. It is easily increased by 
root-division. 
The last of our cottagers’ favourites I shall name at present 
is Spircea ulmaria plena. The single variety (Meadow Sweet) is 
called by Martyn the “ Queen of the Meadow,” a very common 
plant, very pretty, and always sweet. The double variety is 
easy to grow in any common garden soil, but likes plenty of 
moisture. Increased by root-division.— Rustic Robin. 
TRAINING SYMMETRICAL FLOAVER-BEDS. 
At the risk of being somewhat egotistical, I would subjoin a 
few words on this subject, to avoid answering personally or by 
letter a number of inquiries as to how the beds here (Luton), 
exposed to sweeping winds, yet retain through most of the 
season the regular desired outline, whether of parallelograms, 
circles, or pyramids. The complaints are general, that after a 
storm of wind or a heavy fall of rain the beds are sweeped into 
bundles, or depressed and elevated into hollows and knolls, and 
that no care afterwards will cause them to assume a pleasing 
artistic outline. When I frequently see scores of beds, and even 
in exposed places, merely planted without any attempt at fasten¬ 
ing or training of any kind, and but little attention given to the 
simplest points of culture, I am not surprised that amateurs of 
refined taste sigh after the old mixed system of flower gardening, 
and wish heartily that this bedding mania would take itself off 
and number itself with oilier manias that had their day and were 
heard of no more. One thing is certain—no plan could have been 
hit upon for keeping the gardener thoroughly and anxiously 
employed without any cessation from toil, if the beds are to be 
made the most of. When we look back to the gardening of 
thirty years ago, with its hundreds of pot plants, we may well 
think that the jolly gardeners of those days would shake as if in 
an ague fit, could they see what thousands of plants must 
annually be raised, and grown, and trained in these flower-beds. 
This season has been peculiarly trying, inasmuch as, judging 
from myself, the flower garden will be something like three weeks 
later in attaining the same perfection as last year, if the weather 
should now be fine. What have flourished extra well with us 
this season are Calceolarias, which have been in full massive 
beauty for the whole of July. What have done worst are the 
Verbenas, with the exception of some long ribbon-rows of Ptirple 
King. Petunias also did ill with the wet, and are just beginning 
to fill in the last week of July, being scarcely forwarder than they 
were last season in the second week in June. 
The main particular little points of culture I gave in a short 
article last season ; I confine myself now merely to training and 
securing. 
The first of these has reference to pegging down lanky, trailing 
plants, as Petunias and Verbenas. This, however, is done more 
for tho purpose of filling the beds equally than for securing the 
plants properly, unless it is desirable to keep the plants very low. 
In some of the great gardens near London, I have seen plants 
of natural upright growth, and rising to from fifteen inches to 
thirty inches in height, pinned down stiffly to a height of four or 
six inches. Such, in general, is worse than labour thrown away; 
more especially when, if the plants had been a foot or six inches 
higher, they would have suited equally well for the position, and 
the plants, even if pinned down at first, would then have assumed 
their natural character. Whatever pegging may be resorted to 
in the first instance, and however satisfactory looking as such 
pegging them may be, because we see at once what the objoct is,— 
all such seen attempts at a period when the beds ought to be 
at their best detract so much from the pleasure we otherwise 
w'ould experience. 
For pegging, so as to cover tho ground, we use great quantities 
of our patent peg. I say nothing against nice pegs made from 
old brooms, pieces of bracken stalks, &c. The making of them 
is a pretty amusement; only, that whilst a score were getting 
ready I should expect a hundred or two of my young shoots to 
be laid fiat on mother earth. I say nothing either against much- 
praised wire pegs resembling ladies’ hair-pins, and own that they 
arc cheap enough and nice things for ladies’ and gentlemen’s 
fingers. I do not use them, because a good many hundredweights 
of them would come to something, and I should not like my 
hands to be pierced with some rusty ones that might be left at 
another season’s planting. Our pegs are chiefly the superabundant 
young summer-shoots of Currants, Apples, Pears, Plums, &c. 
Half a dozen of these are held near the points in the left hand ; 
and the fingers of the right hand being brought down through 
them removes all the leaves. The soft points are whipped off 
with the open knife, held also in the right hand; and, as soon as 
I could write this period, an active lad has got an armful of them 
in a basket. The basket is taken to the bed. A small handful 
of these stripped green shoots is held in the left hand. Each 
shoot will make as many pegs as it is as many times from five to 
six inches in length. One shoot is taken in the right hand; six 
inches of it are broken off over the open knife. The two ends of 
the six-inch piece are brought together; crack goes the centre, 
bnt still holding by the underwood and bark, forming the hair¬ 
pin ; and down go the two ends in the soil over the shoot you 
peg down,—one and another and another being disposed ot in 
half the time a clever follow would say “Jack Robinson.” We 
seldom trouble ourselves to save such pegs afterwards, unless 
they are much larger, for future use; but strong ones we fre¬ 
quently keep for another year. In the early part of the season, 
