Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

September 20th. — Towards the end of this month we take up the double Violets — old Neapolitan and Marie Louise are the ones we grow — exchanging runners with friends and neighbours in the spring, as it is not well always to go on growing from the same plants, especially in a light soil, as they, deteriorate. In April the old plants are broken up and the runners planted in a good, well-made bed of loam and leaf mould, not much manure, under a wall facing north, to keep them cool and shaded all the summer ; they must be watered if the weather is very dry. At this time of year we make a deep hole in the full sun in the kitchen garden, fill this in with the ordinary stuff for making a hot-bed, putting the frame over this, with the sides a little sunk to keep out the cold, and fill up the frame with good mould. It is of supreme importance that the Violets should be planted quite close to the glass of the frame, touching at first, as the mould always sinks a little. If the winter is cold, it helps the Violets very much to put some rough boards a foot away SEPTEMBER 173 from the outside of the frame, and fill up the space with leaves or manure. We find nitrate of soda useful for many things, and especially so for Violets. For Czars and other outdoor Violets it is useful to cut a ditch running north and south, and plant both banks with young runners of Violets in April. The position is more natural to the plants than on the flat ground, and they are shaded during part of each day ; this makes a great difference to so many plants. Ophiopogon spicatus is a small herbaceous plant which no one would grow merely for its unshowy little lilac flower, which appears late in the autumn, but it is well worth growing in every garden, because its pretty foliage is in its prime about December and January, and is most useful for mixing with small greenhouse flowers. September 25th. — The plants moved from the reserve garden in July have done very well. The Michaelmas Daisies are unusually good. There are a great many dwarf kinds, very suitable for small gardens. Little shapely trees covered with starry white or lilac flowers are, I suppose, to be got anywhere now; mine came from my neighbour, Mr. Barr, who has a grand collec- tion. I can only repeat what I said before, how easily these plants can be divided and replanted in spring, and in large and roomy places a Michaelmas Daisy garden can be made for the late months. Boltonia corymbosa is a charming plant, more restrained than the Michaelmas Daisy, and better suited to small gardens. It is very pretty picked, but its fault is that it comes in rather early. The wet weather has suited one of the handsomest of autumn flowers, the tall white Pyrethrum. Salvias do well here, but they like it dry and hot, and are not so good as usual this year, though flowering well now. S. patens, the dark-blue, and S. splendens, the beautiful scarlet one, 174 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN