The Gardening World, August 31, 1907 
CONTENTS. 
Amateur's Letter to Amateurs, An 569 
Aphis Brush, An (illus.) . 57 $ 
Bedding Plants, Propagating Various 582 
Bulbs for the Rockery . 57 1 
Carnations and Picotees at the 
’Warren (illus.) . 574 
Chrysanthemums for Decorative Pur¬ 
poses ..... 57 ° 
Competition Awards . 57 ° 
Competition, Pme Letter .. 572 
Enquire Within . 579 
Erica Cinerea .. 573 
Flower Garden, The . 577 
F.ruit Garden, The ... 577 
Fumigating Plant Flouses (illus.) ... 573 
Fumitory, A Dwarf (illus.) . 57 1 
Greenhouse, The Amateur's . 577 
Hanging Baskets .. 57 ° 
Kitchen Garden, The . 577 
Orchids for Amateurs . 57 $ 
Pruning, Summer . 573 
Work of the Week . 5 77 
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Sta Cottar S a? deu. 
The Cottage Garden shows a face 
Of heartsease and of herb -of-grace. 
Such Sunday cleanness and so bright, 
In lavender and pink and white. 
With little beds in formal box, 
And rows of stocks and hollyhocks, 
Clove-gillyflowers and sops-in-wine, 
And jessamine and eglantine. 
Now where the lilies bowed their heads, 
Like angel-folk in the ^garden-beds, 
Now in the equinoctial weather 
The China asters press together. 
Never was such a damask seen 
On gown cf Empress or of Queen ; 
Never was silk or taffety 
So finely pranked to take the eye. 
Pink, purple, white, in serried masses, 
That give no hint of leaves or grasses; 
The China asters ope like suns 
Their cheerful constellations. 
The rose, the rose’s hues are dull, 
No snapdragon is beautiful, 
Beside the China aster’s grace, 
Who shows a new-washed morning face. 
As though a peaccck changed his hues 
To rose and purple, whites and blues, 
The Cottage Garden spreads a train 
Of colours from the rainbow ta’en. 
The Cottage Garden shows a flare 
Of splendour to the evening star; 
A country girl so fresh, so fair, 
She makes Court ladies dull by her. 
Pall Mall Gazette. 
A Matter of Importance. 
In too many cases it happens that seeds, 
say, of useful hardy perennials, are sown, 
and duly appear in the boxes, pots, or 
seed pans in which they were placed. 
But, because they are not needed for the 
decorative display of the current year 
they do not receive anything like the sedu¬ 
lous care and attention that were bestowed 
upon the half-hardy annuals that were 
sown under similar conditions earlier in 
the year. Only the other day I was struck 
with this fact. There stood a bo'x of Wall¬ 
flower seedlings overcrowded, starved, and 
stunted. These plants were expected to 
make a good display in the spring—and 
this they will not, and cannot do. All 
amateurs should realise the fact that it is 
essential to grow forward their plants with 
as little check as possible. The seedling 
stage is a critical one in the life of a 
plant; neglect it then, and it will never 
make up what it loses. These seedlings 
have been carefully transplanted to an 
open border, that is to say, as many of 
them as would be needed, and the rest 
thrown away. And this applies, of 
course, to many things beside the above- 
mentioned Wallflowers. At the present 
time many of the greenhouse seedlings— 
Cinerarias and others—will be needing 
care. These should be potted off singly, 
just as soon as it is necessary. It is not 
a usual process, but I must confess that 
the best batch of Cinerarias I ever reared 
spent three or four months of their exis¬ 
tence in a cool north border out-of-doors, 
and when the time came to pot them up 
for the greenhouse the beautiful violet 
tint on the underside of the leaves was 
vivid almost beyond description. 
Kalanchoe Flammea. 
It is always interesting to grow a few 
of the more uncommon plants in the 
greenhouse, and it seems to ine there is 
something especially fascinating about 
such plants that have a succulent and 
fleshy foliage, a specimen or two of Kalan¬ 
choe has always a delightfully pleasing 
effect among foliage of other charac¬ 
ter. I have found it one of the 
easiest plants to grow from seed, 
seed, by the way that was sent me 
by an enthusiastic amateur gardener and 
reader of THE GARDENING WORLD. The 
seed is very small, and germinates 
quickly, and" should be sown in a light 
sandy compost. It is necessary to water 
the young seedlings carefully so as not 
to wash them out of the soil. The plants 
should be kept fairly dry in winter, and 
not exposed to frost. The flower is a bril¬ 
liant red in colour. 
Heliotropes. 
I often think we do not treat our Helio¬ 
tropes in a manner to get from them half 
the beauty and profusion of blossom of 
which they are capable. I am not think¬ 
ing of them now as bedding plants, but as 
subjects for the greenhouse. Too often 
we know them only as ordinary pot plants, 
but, see them as climbers in a greenhouse, 
or left to cover an otherwise unused top 
shelf, as I saw one a short while ago. It 
was planted in a tub, and had made its 
way to the top of the greenhouse, then, in 
untrained and beautiful wild profusion, it 
ran along the top shelf and was a perfect 
mass of hundreds of fragrant flowers. So 
far as named varieties go Lord Roberts, 
Perfection, and Reine des V iolets are 
charming. Perfection needs especial 
mention on account of its deep rich 
colouring. There was something in the 
wild growth of this beautiful plant that 
recalled the luxuriance and profuseness of 
Heliotropes growing in southern Europe, 
so well I remember a great cascade many 
feet in height covered with blossom in the 
south of Spain, and it is for this reason 
that I must be forgiven for mentioning the 
beauty of this untrained specimen in so 
neat and orderly a place as an English 
greenhouse. 
Ficus repens. 
Sometimes quite unimportant plants 
have especial value because they fill some 
particular use and need. Under this cate¬ 
gory I always place Ficus repens. It 
hangs over the side of the pot in charm¬ 
ing fashion, and is capital to associate 
with Ferns and other moisture-loving sub¬ 
jects, as it needs quite a minimum of sun¬ 
shine. Sometimes, in halls, vestibules, 
and other positions-one is glad to have 
plants that can withstand unfavourable 
conditions of light and air, etc., and 
Ficus repens is capital for such positions, 
so long as it never is allowed to suffer 
for want of water. One of its great 
charms is the intensity of the green of its 
foliage. Another use to which it may be 
put is to train it to a damp conservatory 
wall, where it would seem to have the 
same beneficial effect as Ivy in extracting 
the moisture and keeping the position in 
a drier and healthier condition. I grew 
this plant last winter in a cold house 
where the thermometer registered six or 
seven degrees of frost night after nighty 
and it suffered no sort of check or injury. 
Saxifraga sarmentosa. 
Another plant that need not be despised 
because known to all is Saxifraga sarmen- 
tosa. There is now-a-days a more striking 
variety in S. sarmentosa tricolor superba. 
This, too, is delightful to intermix with 
