744 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
July 24, 1886. 
rich compost of loam, leaf-mould, old manure and sand, 
32 size pots being those employed for the largest plants. 
Abundance of water and liquid manure is required by 
Balsams, and large specimens that are flowering pro¬ 
fusely are improved by a mulching of manure and turfy 
loam placed over their roots in the pots. To facilitate 
this being done when it is intended to grow large plants, 
the final shift should be into 24 size pots, leaving a good 
space from the rim to the soil, say 1J in. or 2 in., and 
in any case sufficient space must be left to permit a 
good quantity of water being applied to thoroughly 
moisten the soil. If Balsams are allowed to become 
dry they are soon rendered useless, their lower leaves 
fall, they are quickly infested with red-spider, and in¬ 
stead of ranking amongst the most beautiful, they are 
absolute disfigurements. Syringe freely until the 
flowers are fully open, and even then a light syringing 
will be needed.— Scolytus. 
•--- 
LONDON GARDENING-.— II. 
Its Difficulties. 
“For every evil under the sun 
There is a remedy, or there’s none ! 
If there is one, try to find it ! 
If there isn’t, never mind it ! ” 
There are two evils for which our London gardener 
may be sure that no remedy is to be found. These it is 
accordingly her duty not to “mind,” or at all events 
to “mind” as little as her temperament may permit. 
They are impure air and lack of light. The first makes 
its baleful presence felt all the year round, though 
with redoubled malignity between October and April, 
the period to which the tyranny of the second is 
practically confined. Now impure air is impure in two 
distinct yet kindred senses ; in the sense of being 
“exhausted,” and in the sense of being charged with 
deleterious matter. The first or negative form of it is 
of course unavoidable wherever an immense population 
exists in a relatively limited area ; and where no room 
has been left for “lungs” in the shape of open spaces, 
judiciously planted and clear of houses, nothing can be 
done to modify the evil. For the second or positive 
form also, indeed, there is no hope of a remedy until 
the reign of smoke abatement committees shall have 
become organized and supreme. Soot is no doubt a 
valuable stimulant, when administered with a due 
regard to proportions, to garden borders, and invited 
to operate beneath the surface, to the confusion of slugs 
not on active service and the enrichment of the soil. 
But feeding is one thing, and inhaling is quite another. 
A deposit of soot, blocking up the pores of a plant and 
lying heavy on its heart, is an application very far 
from vivifying. And it is precisely of this that our 
invincible foe, impure air, is the indefatigable purveyor. 
No one who has not grown and cared for hardy plants 
in London can form any conception of the formidable 
opposition offered by “blacks,” or of the amount of 
evil work that a single fog can do. For hardy plants 
must have air from above, and however admirably con¬ 
trived frames may be to protect from rain when rain 
falls, and from sun when sunshine scorches, they could 
not meet the difficulty even if the contents of a whole 
border could be committed to their costly care ; for 
though the air might play around, below, and through 
them, the grower could not always dispense with a 
direct supply of it from above, and with it must 
descend the fatal “blacks.” Before me at this moment 
is a little company of seedling Auriculas, healthy and 
erect, each bidding fair to fill its thumb-pot with 
energetic root-fibres before I am likely to have time to 
find it a bigger house. If they were the happy in¬ 
habitants of a country garden, say thirty miles from 
London, how spotless would be the dainty green of their 
young leaves ! Small need there of a camel’s-hair 
brush to help them to breathe and to keep them clean I 
But here, though their “environment” is favourable 
enough, for the season is high July and the weather is 
brilliant, the poor little delicate leaflets are sprinkled 
as if somebody had been dusting them with black 
pepper—verily we have an invincible foe ! 
Yes. But yet this invincible might be dislodged 
from many a position customarily ceded to it,—nay 
one might think, specially prepared for its reception ! 
For what is the staple commodity of the ordinary 
London garden ? "What are those which, whatever else 
may be conspicuous by its absence, are sure to be found 
there ? What but EVERGREENS ? 
Have your little garden “laid out” by contract,—or 
commission your nearest friend to get it stocked before 
you take possession,—or copy your neighbours’ gardens 
as they lie suggestively right and left of your own. 
The result in all these cases will be the same :—Ever¬ 
greens ! Laurels mainly ; Laurels plain and Laurels 
speckled, Laurels narrow-leaved, broad-leaved, willow¬ 
leaved ; Laurels of Portugal, of the Caucasus, of Cali¬ 
fornia ! ! But also, among others, the Euonymus 
japonicus, the Box, the Holly, the Bay, the Privet, 
and the Aucubas. If you have a grass plot, four 
varieties of Thuja will probably keep solemn guard at 
its four corners, and you will be fortunate if the exact 
middle of it is not announced by a bed encircling a fifth 
specimen of “greenery all the year round.’’ “So cheer¬ 
ful in winter ! ” say the neighbours on the right and 
left, “ and so little trouble! You just put them in, 
and have done with it! ” Ah, that is true. You have 
indeed “done with ” more than your excellent neigh¬ 
bours mean, when these “cheerful” subjects have 
established themselves in your poor little garden : you 
have done, for instance, with the hope of successful 
flower-growing, and with the chance of a variety there, 
keeping step .with the varying seasons; you have 
invited Gog and Magog to settle in Lilliput, and by 
and by Lilliput will be eaten out of house and home. 
Moreover—not to lose sight of our Invincible—you 
have provided most hospitable accommodation for 
“blacks” ; the Laurel-leaves particularly offer them 
undisturbed repose on the large scale of layers, which 
after a gentle rain become gritty paste, but succumb to 
a drying wind so far as to break up into flakes of solid 
soot, nicely calculated to extinguish the modest aspira¬ 
tions of the poor primrose, or violet, or hepatica on 
which they presently fall. 
A good-sized London Laurel-bush is an agency 
almost as mischievous as Vesuvius ; it has its dormant 
periods—though these are not so harmless as they 
seem—but let a ^boisterous wind arise, or heavy rain 
come on, and many are the poor little Pompeii’s that 
are smothered alive. The quantity of soot harboured, 
as on shelves and ledges, by a dozen such bushes would 
amaze any person untaught by experience ; who would 
take the trouble to collect it and to measure the spoil. 
My own little garden is about 60 ft. long by 25 ft. wide, 
and when I took possession of it I found, besides the 
four watchers at the four corners of the grass-plat and 
a funereal Yew a sa centre piece, ten gigantic Laurels, 
four Hollies, and several Bays and Box-trees, while the 
walls were thickly covered with ancient Ivy and a 
tapestry of matted Virginian Creeper, I was assured 
that no flowers would grow here, so perverse were 
flowers ! By degrees, for it was an enterprise almost 
worthy of comparison with the removal of Cleopatra’s 
Needle, the shrubs were all translated to a neighbouring 
churchyard, just then a mendicant for indiscriminate 
greenery, the walls were stripped of their drapery, and 
the spectral Yew opportunely died a natural death. 
I should now be ungrateful indeed if I complained of 
the perversity of flow r ers. 
Impure air, then, we have seen to be a serious and 
an insurmountable difficulty in the path of the London 
gardener ; but it is at least open to us to deny to its 
deposits the vantage-ground furnished by the conven¬ 
tional evergreens. Careful housewives wisely inveigh 
against superfluities that constitute “ dust-traps let 
us town gardeners beware in like manner of soot-traps ! 
let us grow deciduous trees and shrubs, which offer 
but slight foot-hold to the enemy at the time when he 
can do most harm, and learn to prefer their healthy 
bareness to the “green in winter” which after all is 
green only by courtesy. In the country it is a widely 
different matter ; there, where space abounds and the 
atmosphere is pure, evergreens are not only innocent 
but highly ornamental; they are in fact worthy of a 
higher destiny than the vocation of soot-collectors and 
florieides. 
In the presence of “ deficient light,” the other great 
difficulty which can neither be treated with nor van¬ 
quished, we are quite helpless. We can only acknow¬ 
ledge its gravity by the judicious avoidance of plants 
blooming late in the autumn. From mid-October 
onwards to the year’s end not much bloom can be 
looked for in the ordinary, walled London garden ; 
sometimes the sunshine fails early in October, as last 
year, and then the most promising Chrysanthemum and 
other buds do not come to fruition. Short of actual 
fog, there are many degrees of haze in a London autumn 
which chill floral ambition. But of all this more here¬ 
after, when, having tried to eliminate the things that 
may not be done, we come to consider and to enumerate 
those that may.— C. A. G. 
MR. JAMES THURSTON. 
The accompanying sketch is from a photograph 
taken by Mr. W. Morton, in Mr. James Thurston’s 
garden at The Cedars, Merriedale, Wolverhampton, 
and represents the Tulip bed of that successful amateur 
florist, together with a portrait of Mr. Thurston. It 
gives the readers of The Gardening World some idea 
of a Tulip bed, how the flowers are grown, how pro¬ 
tected and shaded at a time when in bloom and required 
for exhibition purposes. The frame work is strong, 
durable, easily fitted together, and as easily removed; 
it admirably serves the purpose for which it was de¬ 
signed, and when no longer required for Tulips, it can be 
utilised for Pinks, Ranunculus, &c., and later on for 
Gladiolus. It is one of those mechanical contrivances 
indispensable to the garden of an amateur florist who 
grows such floral pets as Mr. Thurston cultivates so 
well ; and it has the advantage of being readily turned 
to account for the adequate protection of various 
subjects. Some account of the construction and putting 
together of the frame shall be given in a week or two. 
Merriedale is a very pleasant district of Wolver¬ 
hampton, lying on the best side of this great business 
centre, and on somewhat high ground, away from the 
smoke of the town. The garden attached to The 
Cedars is by no means large, but in it Mr. Thurston 
cultivates a great variety of subjects, such as Tulips, 
Pinks, a few Auriculas and Polyanthuses, Roses, Gladioli 
Delphiniums, Phloxes, &c., while there is a good selec¬ 
tion of the choicer hardy plants. A portion of it is 
devoted to the growth of vegetables ; the largest part 
to flowers. 
Auriculas and Polyanthuses, including some fine and 
promising seedlings of each, are either in pots in a 
cold frame, which is the summer quarters of the choicer 
sorts, or in beds. Mr. Thurston has a select collection 
of named show and alpine Auriculas, and many 
seedlings, especially of the latter, raised from the finest 
sorts, and from which he reasonably hopes to obtain 
some good things. Of gold-laced Polyanthuses he has a 
collection of the best named varieties, including George 
IV., Lancer, Prince Regent, Cheshire Favourite, Lord 
Beaconsfield, &c., planted out under a wall, facing east, 
where they are doing well. This wall is on one side 
of the garden, and at the foot there is a slightly raised 
border, in which the named and seedling Polyanthuses 
are planted out. This bed was made by taking out the 
soil, placing a layer of good dung, and filling up with 
a light sandy loam enriched with leaf mould. This 
affords a cool bottom, a valuable fertiliser, and the very 
spot for the summer quarters of these interesting 
plants. There are about 1,000 seedling Polyanthuses 
all from seed, obtained from crosses between Geo. IV., 
Lancer, Cheshire Favourite, and Prince Regent. Then 
choice collections of show and fancy Pansies find a 
place, and come in useful for exhibition purposes 
during the months of July and August. Roses abound 
in the garden in all cases as dwarfs, some of which 
have grown into quite large sized trees. The collection 
includes also about fifty of the finest named varieties of 
Phloxes; Mr. Thurston has a select collection of 
named varieties which he has picked out from those he 
has tried. They are just coming into bloom. He gives 
the names of the following varieties as making a very 
suitable amateur collection, viz.—Roi des Roses, J. K. 
Lord, Gloire de Neuilly, John Forbes, Flora McNab, 
Star of Bath, Earl of Rosslyn, George Grieve, Madame 
Marie Saisson, A. F. Barron, Souvenir de Berreyer, 
Duke of Sutherland, Madame Bonneau, Mrs. Turner, 
Perfection, Philippa Penglase, William Bull, and 
Marchioness of Lome. In addition, Mr. Thurston has 
a batch of very promising seedlings, and he adopts the 
practice of sowing the seed in spring, drawing a ridge 
in the open ground about three quarters of an inch 
deep, the seed germinates in about two months, the 
seedlings are planted out to flower as soon as large 
enough, and they bloom freely the second year. Then 
there is a collection of very fine seedling Delphiniums, 
the seeds of which are served in the same way. In 
not a few neighbouring gardens in Merriedale, Delphin¬ 
iums of rich and varied hues of blue are to be seen, 
representing the overflow from the garden at The 
Cedars. There is a small collection of English Iris, 
and a few other choice subjects too numerous to 
mention. 
The Tulips, which were in the bed at the time the 
photograph was taken, have been lifted, and placed away 
carefully until planting time comes round in November 
next; the bulbs in a supplementary and later bed are 
