. My garden, its plan and culture together with a general description of its geology, botany, and natural history. Gardening. GREENHOUSE PLANTS. 249. GREENHOUSE PLANTS. We have no conservatory, but only a cold glass shed, yet we con- trive to grow many plants by keeping them under the vines in winter, and by removing them to the glass shed or outer air in spring. Indeed some of my plants are simply placed in the cold frames and matted over in frosty weather. First and foremost, the Camellias {Camellia japonica, fig. 504) give us noble flowers in the spring. The camellias were introduced into F
. My garden, its plan and culture together with a general description of its geology, botany, and natural history. Gardening. GREENHOUSE PLANTS. 249. GREENHOUSE PLANTS. We have no conservatory, but only a cold glass shed, yet we con- trive to grow many plants by keeping them under the vines in winter, and by removing them to the glass shed or outer air in spring. Indeed some of my plants are simply placed in the cold frames and matted over in frosty weather. First and foremost, the Camellias {Camellia japonica, fig. 504) give us noble flowers in the spring. The camellias were introduced into Florence from Japan by a monk of the name of Camellus, and to this day they are exten- sively grown in that elegant city. There they attain to the 'dimensions of trees, having thousands of blossoms; and at one private garden about 1,200 varieties are grown. At Florence, and indeed along the shores of the Mediterranean, they are grown in rotten ^ . Fig. 504.—Camellia. chestnut wood, and nourish abundantly m that material. In England such material cannot be procured, but I have tried rotten tan and also fibrous peat with success, and I am now trying cocoa-nut refuse as a substitute for chestnut wood, but am unable to give an opinion upon its merits at present. Rotten elm wood did not suit the plants; but it is plain from what the Floren- tine gardeners told me that our mode of culture is not right. Camellias are raised from seed at Florence, by sowing it in a shady place in the open ground. If the flower of any seedling plant is satisfactory, the plant is named and propagated by grafting: if unsatisfactory, it is used as a stock upon which an approved kind is worked. I have raised seed which was given to me at Florence, but have never grafted the young plants. Out of such numerous varieties it is impossible to particularize many; yet every garden should possess the double white, the fimbriata, and some of the double red and shaded kinds. The names of my camellias have not been c
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