Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

I am sure many of the eye-shocks we receive with regard to colour — both in dress, in rooms, and in the arrangement of flowers — is not so much owing to what would be called bad taste as to various degrees of colour-blindness. An inability to see colours at all, much less to see the shades truly and correctly, is far more common than we imagine, and is one of the things that should be tested in child- ren, as — though probably the defect cannot be cured, any more than short sight, which is now so much helped by glasses, &c. — any good oculist would give advice as to the best method of cultivating the eye to be true as regards colour. The improvement in the arrangement of SEPTEMBER 163 cut flowers in the last twenty years is very great indeed, and in almost every family there is one member at least who gives it real love and attention ; but I hardly ever see a greenhouse, large or small, that is not left entirely to the tender mercy of the gardener, who thinks of nothing, and quite rightly, but of his plants being healthy. He spots everything about — red, white, blue, grey, yellow — and often in the very midst he places some well-grown but terrible blue-pink or magenta Pelargonium, which puts everything out of tone. In the greenhouse, as in the garden, two things are to be aimed at — form and colour : and in a greenhouse one must be sure to add plants that give forth a sweet smell. To get the colour good, you must keep the plants in groups, the same colours as much as possible together, a bold mass of yellow, red, or blue, dividing them with green or nearly-green plants. Cryptomeria japonica makes a charming greenhouse shrub, and will grow in very small pots, and not grow quickly ; it is, however, only one of many. Another small green growth that is very pretty, and easy to grow and increase by division, is Pilea miiscosa. For smell I know nothing more delicious than the mixture of Lilium auratum and Hmnea elegans ; but lately I have had to give up that tiresome though charming half-hardy biennial, as, like the Hollyhocks, it is so apt to get a disease, its leaves growing spotty and falling off. In the ' English Flower Garden ' it is said that this happens from sowing it too early the previous year. A thick- leaved plant called Rochea falcata I find a useful green- house plant. It has to be two or three years old before it flowers, but is easy to increase from cuttings in July. I tried drying it off like the Cactuses, but that does not answer ; it requires a warm greenhouse all the winter and a little water. For baskets in the greenhouse I use Fuchsia procumbens ; it has a lovely little miniature M2 1 64 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN flower, and later a pretty fruit three times as big as the flower. Campanula garganica (blue, and the white one too) and Convolvulus mauritanicus are lovely basket plants. The last-named, nearly hardy, is from North Africa, and easy to increase from division or cuttings. The Cape Mesembryanthemums are pretty basket plants, and do well in a sunny greenhouse. Small, old-fashioned Ivy- leaved Geraniums grow prettily in baskets. But the flowers are endless that can be grown in this way ; some require a saucer to keep in the moisture, others do not. Nothing, however, will teach all this but experience and constant reference to the books.