Flowers.—
Floriculture has long been a favourite pursuit among the inhabitants, which no doubt has been the chief cause of rendering this department of gardening so famous. Although the best gardens are of no great extent, yet they often contain beautiful, rare, and valuable plants; and there are few cottages which have not a considerable space dedicated to flowers. The mildness of the climate is such, that a variety of tender plants are grown in the open air, which would hardly endure the same exposition in the warmest spots of Devonshire or Cornwall. When the temperature falls to 6 degrees below freezing point, the season is considered unusually severe; consequently, many of the Cape heaths and hardier geraniums, together with a number of Australian shrubs and plants, and even those from central America endure our ordinary winters in screened situations without the least injury whatever. Thus, the eobœa scandens, maurandia barclayana, and other creepers of a similar nature are found to spring up naturally from seed under the walls where they are planted; and even the Bath scarlet geranium has for several years been an ornament to cottage walls, to the height of ten or eleven feet. Fuchsias make such rapid progress that they finally become shrubs, when from their encumberance they are trained to poles like standard roses. Bulbs are cultivated with considerable advantage, as the frost is of such short duration, that it rarely ever freezes more than an inch or two in depth, and should a slight fall of snow happen it is their complete protection. From a garden review, given by the late Horticultural Chronicle, it appears there were orange trees laden with fruit in every respectable garden; and in that of the dowager Lady De Saumarez there was one remarkably curious, from its rind being grown out into a kind of spar. In these gardens, and also in those of Sir Thomas Saumarez and Mr Brock, of Belmont, were montanariums, sanguisorb, large tree myrtles, creeping serius (eight yards long), mimosa (tree), paradoxia, candula, clematis azuria grandiflora; and in the green-house of Mr Brock were no less than from twelve to fifteen hundred calceolaria, together with innumerable others, all teeming with health and vigour.
