Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

In the old convent gardens Calvary Clover was sup- posed not to grow unless sown on Good Friday. It is a curious little annual, with a blood-red spot on each leaf, and the seed-pod is surrounded by a case which pulls out, or rather unwinds, into a miniature crown of thorns. A friend has asked me what she should plant on the front of a lovely old house facing south. It now has on it at one end Ivy and on the other an old Wistaria. My first advice is take away the Ivy ; the place is too good for it, and it hides the beautiful old brickwork. An old Wistaria is quite lovely if part or all of it is dragged away from the house and trained over wooden posts, either in front of a window or a door, so as to form a kind of pergola. Until this is done, or it is grown as they do it in Japan — namely, as a standard, with its branches spread and supported all around, and you stand beneath it— you have no idea of the joy that is to be got out of a Wistaria, with its beautiful lilac blooms hanging from the MARCH 43 bare and twisted branches above your head and the blue sky behind them. The whole effect is indeed different and very superior to that of seeing the blooms hanging straight and flat from branches nailed close to the wall. Unless it is protected from the north and east, it is of course more liable, in unfavourable springs, to have its blooms injured by late frosts. The plant itself, I believe, is absolutely hardy. The creepers I recommended to plant on a south front are as follows : — Magnolia grandiflora — the roots must be pulled about, not cut, and manured in the autumn for the first few years after planting, to make it grow quickly ; a Yellow Banksia, single if possible, but they are not easy to get ; an early yellow Dutch Honeysuckle ; a Pyrus japonica ; Chimonantkus fragrans, now called Calyc- anthus prcecox ; a Beve d'Or Eose; a La Marque Eose (no house is perfect without one) ; a few Clematises, which in non-chalky soils must have chalk and lime or brick- rubbish put to their roots, not manure ; Choisya ternata, a low-growing shrub, wherever there is room between the other plants ; a Marechal Niel Eose. Forsythia suspensa, Jasminum nudiflorum, Clematis montana, and late Dutch Honeysuckle will all do on the east and west sides of a house as well as on the south. Two other things that would grow on the south wall are Bignonia radicans and Garry a elliptica, a charming evergreen with fascinating catkins, which form in January. The male or pollen- bearing plant is the handsomest. This list I actually made in the autumn, which is really the best time for planting ; but there is often so much to do then that planting is apt to get postponed, and rather than lose a whole year, spring planting is quite worth trying. In damp soils I really believe it answers best. In dry soils, or where a plant is likely to be robbed 44 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN by the roots of neighbouring shrubs, or by old-established climbers, it is not a bad plan to sink in the ground an old tub or half-cask, or even an old tin footbath with the bottom knocked out. Then fill it with the best soil, and put in your plant ; it will benefit more in this way from watering in dry weather. There is nothing so disappoint- ing as to lose a plant in spring, as that means the loss of a whole year.