Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

especially well grown as a single plant in good soil. To add to its perfections it has a delicate, sweet smell, and does well in water. Gardeners will always look upon it, with a show of reason, as a horrid weed ; but flower- lovers will never be without it. The little yellow Fumitory is invaluable for walls and dry places and under shrubs, always looking fresh and green and flourishing, however dry the weather or apparently un- favourable the situation. It is a weed, but it keeps away other weeds, which, as the old nurse said, was the great use of mothers — they kept away stepmothers. Another low-growing, fast- spreading small plant I strongly recom- mend is the Polygonum affine. It has pink flowers, which continue in bloom many weeks ; it can be increased with the greatest facility by division, and it is a good border plant, as the leaves take beautiful colours in the autumn. The hardy Plumbago larpenta is a first-rate plant for a sunny, dry place, and its bright-blue flowers continue till the frost comes. Tradescantia virginica is a plant con- stantly turned out of borders, as it spreads so fast ; but all it requires is severe thinning in the spring, and again sometimes in the summer. I have four shades — the ordinary blue, a deep red-purple shade, a pale grey, and a pure white ; they are lovely flowers, and interesting through their unusual shape. All these last-mentioned plants are well worth growing in even the smallest gardens. September 15th. — I have flowered out of doors this year for the first time the beautiful Amaryllis belladonna. Anyone who has a garden, or a wall or a corner near a greenhouse, where the conditions for growing this Lily can be carried out, ought to spare no effort to make it successful. The instructions have been clearly given in the ' English Flower Garden,' but I have found two other things helped the growth — one is planting them by the wall of the greenhouse where the warm pipes run ; M 1 62 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN and the other is, when the leaves have died down in June, and the earth is weeded and raked, to cover the beds where the bulbs are planted with pieces of glass, so that the rains of July, which are so frequent, should not damp the bulbs before they are ready to start into flower in September. When the flower-buds appear, a dose of liquid manure may be given them ; and a little fern to protect their leaves in early spring is desirable. I know nothing more beautiful than the fine, pink, Lily-like flower on its thick, rich brown stem when brought into a room. September 16th. — About this date is when we look, here in the South, for the first sign of cold, or even for frost. The weather must be watched, and any half-hardy things that have not done flowering are best taken up, potted, and encouraged to go on flowering. The drought this year kept many things back. My Tuberoses and the sweet-smelling white Bouvardia — the one best worth growing, especially outside — I must now take up, and they will go on flowering in the greenhouse. The pink and red Bouvardias are pretty, but have no sweet scent, like the white ; the pink ones are a true pink, and that is always worth cultivating for a greenhouse, where every shade of magenta should be excluded.