Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

All these plants want constant watching, pruning, manuring, chalking, mulching. One ought always to be on the watch to see if things do not look well, and why they do not. The great thing to remember is, that if a plant is worth growing at all it is worth growing healthily. A Daisy or a Dandelion, fine, healthy, and robust, as they hold up their heads in the spring sunshine, give more pleasure and are better worth looking at than the finest flower one knows that looks starved, drooping and perishing at the flowering- time. With many plants here, if not watered at the flowering-time, the buds droop and the flowers never expand at all. We have been eating lately, as Spinach, and found it quite delicious, the leaves of the Chicory, which Sutton 96 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN calls ' Christmas Salad.' It is a first-rate plant all through the winter, an excellent salad, and now so good, useful, and wholesome to eat cooked. It should be dressed as recommended for Spinach in ' Dainty Dishes.' This is the time to make Rhubarb jam ; if carefully made, and a little ginger added, it is very good indeed. To my mind, few flowers please the eye as the Tulip does. T. gesneriana, with its handsome long stem and brilliant flower, gives me especial delight. The Tulip is a member of the Lily family, and has an interesting history, which I read one day in a newspaper. It is a. native of Asia Minor, and was brought from Constantinople in 1557. It was first flowered in England in 1559 by the wife of an apothecary. She had procured the first bulb from a grateful sailor who had brought it home in return for attentions during sickness, by which his life was saved, It was all he had, like the widow's mite, but it was a source of great profit to the wife of the apothecary, who tenderly cultivated it, and sold the bulbs for a guinea each after she had, by good care, procured a sufficient stock of them. May 6th. — The garden looks dull just now ; but four weeks of no rain always produce that effect on this soil. When the showers do come, everything revives in the most extraordinary way, partly from the earth being so warm and dry. The only rather showy things in the garden are some early red Ehododendrons, and they look droopy; a Siberian Crab, which has been one mass of snowy- white blossoms for a fortnight ; and a most desir- able little shrub called Deutzia elegans, quite hardy, totally unaffected by our coldest winters, flowering every year, and wanting no attention except the cutting-back every year after flowering. Berberises I do not find quite so hardy as one expects them to be, but this very likely is MAY 97 because they do not grow very robust, owing to the dryness of the soil. B. Darwinii was nearly killed by the severe winter, but is now flowering profusely, and is a lovely and desirable shrub. The whole charm of flowering shrubs, to my mind, depends on their being given lots of room, and sufficient care being taken of them to make them individually healthy plants. The dear little pink Daphne Cneorum is doing well, but I have myself often given it a canful of water during the last fortnight. It is very much strengthened if, after the flowering, you layer a certain number of the branches, covering them with a little peat ; this enables you to increase your stock of plants, and improves the size of your specimen plant.