Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID POT-POUEEI FEOM A SUEEEY GAEDEN POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN BY MRS. C. W. EARLE WITH AN APPENDIX BY LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON TEATH EDITION. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 1898 TO MY SISTER THE COUNTESS OF LYTTON PREFACE THESE ' Notes ' would never have been extracted from me without the encouragement I have received from all my dear nieces, real and adopted, and the very practical assistance of one of them. Now that the book is written, I can only hope that it will not prove too great a disappointment to them all. CONTENTS JANUARY Introductory — Indispensable books — An old Hertfordshire gar- den— Eeminiscences — My present garden plants in a London room — Japanese floral arrangement — Cooki vegetables and fruit — Making coffee — Early blossoms — Winter gardening — Frost pictures on window-panes . FEBRUARY Forced bulbs — The exhibitions of the Eoyal Horticultural Society — Early spring salads and vegetables — Ehubarb tarts — Orange marmalade — Eeceipts by a French chef . 23 MARCH Slow-growing hardy shrubs — The Swanley Horticultural College — Gardening as an employment for women — Aucubas berries — Planting Asparagus — Brussels Sprouts — Sowing annuals — A list of flowering creepers — ' The Poet in the City ' — Old illustrated gardening books 38 APRIL Whims of the weather — Spring flowers — The herbaceous nur- sery— Love for the garden — A light sprayer — Homely French receipt— French gardening — The late frosfs . . 70 x POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN MAY PAGE Vegetable growing — Autumn annuals— Spring seeds— Descrip- tion of my own garden — Weeding — Houses facing west — Flowering shrubs — May flowers— Sundials — Eoses and Creepers — History of the Tulip — Salads — Plant shelters — Sweet Verbena — Blue Anemones — Packing cut flowers — A few simple receipts— Plants in pots . . .86 JUNE Hands and fingers after weeding — Shrub-pruning— Boxes for birds — Eobins in greenhouse — ' Burning Bush ' — Two Poly- gonums — Strawberries— Geraniums and cuttings— Cactuses — Freezia bulbs — Gloriosa superba — Luncheon dishes — Cucumbers 116 JULY The Welsh Poppy — Astrantias— Old Green Peas — Red Currants — The Madonna Lily, L'&pte de la Vierge — The value of the reserve garden — An English summer's day — Light soils and dry summers — Other people's gardens— Notebooks— Sunny lawns — Dutch gardens — Fountains and water-tanks — Lobelia cardinalis — Watering out of doors — Two hardy shrubs 128 AUGUST Gilbert White— The decline of vegetable culture in the Middle Ages— Preserving French Beans and Scarlet Runners— Scotch gardens — Tropceolum speciosum — Crimson-berried Elder— The coast of Sutherlandshire— The abuse of coarse Creepers 145 SEPTEMBER Weeds we alternately love and hate — Amaryllis belladonna — First touch of frost — Colour-blindness — Special annuals — Autumn seed-sowing— Re-planting Carnation layers — Planting drives and approaches to small houses — ' Wild gardening '—Double Violets— Sal vias— Baby chickens— Pigeons ICO CONTENTS xi OCTOBER PAGE