Maurandya; the last is not often used in this manner, but we have known an old root taken from a basket to grow twenty feet in one summer. At each of the piazza posts, set one or the other of these vines, and between them, set such Dahlies as will give you the most pleasing contrast in color; the dwelling will protect from the winds, and the drip of the eaves give necessary moisture. Many of the standard annuals just mentioned may be used as .piazza plants. Asters, Balsams, and Stocks are charming in pots or vases; smaller flowers make a handsome border, grown in boxes upon the floor. Portulacca at the sunny end will be very attractive all the summer. If one has neither plant stand, nor place to set one, a long, low shelf, supported by brackets, under and between the windows, will accommodate many plants, either in pots or boxes, after the manner of window gardens; in these, many conservatory plants can be grown with the highest success. Geraniums, especially, are very satisfactory; slips are easily obtained and will grow rapidly, or they will bloom from seed in a single summer. Foliage plants, of any description, are also very appropriate, particularly the Coleus; these are not always satisfactory as house plants, but on a piazza, with eastern exposure, they will attain a wonderful growth, approach maturity and show signs of age in early autumn. Heliotropes, Callas, Begonias and Fuchsias are also excellent; any plant that matures quickly is desirable.

But the crowning beauty of this kind of gardening is the hanging basket; it matters little what is the size or shape, luxuriant vines and thrifty plants will beautify any receptacle; dishes of almost every kind are used, and others may be constructed, both elegant and useful, or elaborate ones may be purchased, if preferred. In selecting vines for baskets, it is a difficult matter to decide what will give most pleasure; those which grow rapidly and afford most foliage and bloom, are most satisfactory; but where there is space and time, nearly every vine of the greenhouse or garden is attainable and appropriate for the piazza. For rapid growth and profuse ornamentation, in sheltered situations in summer, we have never seen a vine that would equal the German Ivy; for the wall, and to run over windows or door-ways, where luxuriant foliage is wanted, it cannot be surpassed; a plant set in spring at each end of a window-box will cover yards of space before autumn. Cobaea Scandens is also a rapid grower, and will do more in the way of decorating walls and windows than anything we know, except the ivy. Among these large vines, should be some pretty bloomers to brighten the green. Thunbergia is excellent in such places, having little foliage, its conspicuous flowers are very attractive. Abronia also is good for this purpose. The Cypress vine is a lovely thing, but sensitive to cold and does not germinate easily, unless the seeds are scalded; it should have a place where its fine, airy foliage and waxlike flow

ers will not be concealed. The old Madeira or Mexican vine is one of the very best things for baskets or posts, or when you wish loops or festoons of vine. But if you wish a vine that will cover a basket or trellis with both flowers and foliage, there is nothing that will excel the Maurandya; its lovely blossoms of purple, blue and white, on delicate sprays of green, make it the most desirable of all the basket vines, even that dainty, little beauty, the Smilax, cannot surpass this, except for decoration.

Many of the trailing vines will add much to the beauty of baskets; one of the best of these is the Kenilworth Ivy; it is one of those graceful thing that are pleasing everywhere; in tiny baskets, or shells suspended by short chains or ribbons from brackets, or in vases beneath pictures it is very lovely; but its most appropriate place is against some background, hanging like a vail from the edge of a window garden. The old-fashioned moneywort, and the new golden variety are both excellent; few things make so striking a contrast.

The three varieties of Tradescantia (wandering Jew) are all good, the buff and green especially so; it is a rampant grower if given shade and moisture, but breaks too easily for baskets in exposed situations; if set against a background, its oddly striped leaves are very attractive. The Vinca and Abutilon and Deeringia are all good foliage vines, but not so useful for the piazza, because of slower growth.

The hanging grasses, too, are very useful in baskets; Panicum Variegatum is one of the best; some of its leaves are white, tipped with pink, and just striped with a single line of green. Another lovely thing, but rarely seen, is the Ficus Repens. This is best in large, low vases; it has rich, fine foliage and woody stems, and is very handsome in floral decorations.

The old ground ivy, with its little blue flowers, will grow where nothing else will; so every place can be occupied. Conceal it behind a row of plants, and it will creep out and cover the handsomest or the homeliest receptacle with its pretty leaves. If one has the slightest admiration for those gigantic climbers, the gourds, the Bryonopsis will give entire satisfaction. It is a graceful, elegant vine, resembling the grape, and is very suitable for a trellis. Many of the vines mentioned will make a lovely basket. Combining one or two varieties, best suited to each other adds to the beauty of all. In this, as in other things, experience is a very successful teacher. An ivy basket is about the nearest approach to perfection possible in baskets. A small plant set at each side will run up the handles, fill the centre with many branches, and return to the floor, growing three or four yards in a few weeks. Some of the pretty trailers should be set at the edges, and a Coleus in the middle, with a bunch of Gypsophila, and you will have a basket that will be the admiration of all who see it.

It will be long before a more pleasing way can be found for

growing vines and trailers than in hanging baskets; but next to this, the most attractive thing is a perfect specimen of some procumbent plant, placed upon brackets, between windows and about doorways. For such situations, there are several very suitable varieties which we shall call bracket plants. Among the best of this class is Othonna Crassifolia; it has rich, heavy foliage, easily broken by winds, and the shelf affords the necessary protection. The Pilea (Artillery plant), with its mossy, drooping foliage, is very graceful and rarely seen. The old-fashioned dew plant, with its thistle-like flowers, is very easily grown, and appears better in such situations than anywhere else. The new variegated variety is very beautiful, but is the most delicate plant to handle we have ever seen, place them anywhere else. But the rarest, handsomest thing for a bracket is the Ice plant; no bead work ever equaled its glittering foliage, and nothing but the fairy frost work ever surpassed it. It must be seen to be appreciated. It grows readily from seed, but is tender when small; after this it requires no extra care. Nemophila and Nierembergia we have used with fine effect. Begonias, if small, are also excellent; their elegant leaves should have a conspicuous place. Some of the varieties grow very rapidly; a slip of Begonia Weltoniensis, set in June, was covered with its lovely pink blossoms long before frost thought of coming.

Fuchsias are beautiful beyond description when placed at the wall, among green vines. Every flower lover knows that a blooming fuchsia is one of the loveliest flowers that ever grew. Slips grow quickly, and bloom when small, and before the end of summer will give you many bunches of their drooping jewels. A pretty way to grow this kind of plant is to fasten a crayon box to a board cut in fanciful shape, after the manner of the back of a bracket. Whenever the plant reaches its best condition, hang it upon the wall wherever you wish. This method makes all the space you have, available, and every such addition is an increase of beauty. In this manner, you may have many of the choicest plants in your piazza garden. Because they must perish with the falling leaves is no more a reason why you should not have them for your summer friends, than, because the Frost King will ruin your garden in autumn, you will have none for him to destroy. There is nothing mysterious or difficult in the culture of any of the varieties mentioned. We know by experience that these will give the quickest and greatest returns for the labor bestowed. Whether you shall have few or many of these lovely things, is somewhat a question of time, but, like many another beautiful thing in life, it is more a question of love. The surroundings of your home will in no way effect the beauty of your flowers; these are the adornings that do not need the embellishments of art to increase their charms. The roughest fence may enclose the fairest flowers, the rudest dwelling may be covered with the loveliest vines; the

gentle rain and refreshing dew will descend upon your humble garden, and the broad, beautiful sunlight will touch and re-touch the colors of your flowers with more than an artist's skill, and in loveliest lines will trace them better than the artist's pencil, pure and perfect in their beauty. No eastern king in all his glory was ever arrayed like one of these. A single flower will often wake the tenderest memories, and create influences that will live long in after years.

Nearly a hundred years ago, a Connecticut farmer and his wife and four little girls, with oxen and sled, braved the storms of a New England winter to find a farm in the forests of Vermont. That mother could not leave all the flowers she loved behind her, so the dear, old Peonies were taken from their snowy bed, and packed with the other household treasures to adorn their new home; in early spring they were planted; they grew and multiplied, till many gardens among those green hills were made bright by their crimson blossoms. That father and mother have long since passed away; the flowers of many summers have faded above their graves, but that unconquerable love for the beautiful in nature still lives in their children to the third and fourth generation. In an eastern home there grows to-day the same roses that bloomed by the pioneer's cabin three-quarters of a century ago. The little boy who loved them then, never forgot their sweet fragrance, and when his own beautiful home was completed, he turned to the old farm for the flowers he loved in boyhood. The old log house had gone to decay; no trace of roof or hearthstone could be found, but the dear, old roses were there. He took them from the meadow and planted them by his door, where his children learned to love them, just as he had done in childhood. In a western home, where other flowers bloom and other children dwell, laid carefully away with the treasures of other years, are a few withered roses from that same rose-bush.

Long and lasting are the pleasures and the influences connected with these exquisite teachers of purity and beauty. In no way can we so successfully impress upon our children the highest appreciation of the good, the true, and the beautiful, as to surround them in their infancy and youth with the refining and elevating influences that attend the cultivation of a floral garden. The home that is made beautiful with fairest flowers and loveliest vines will become a picture in memory never to be forgotten; the passer-by will think of it in all his journeyings; the casual visitor will remember it in all lands, and the children reared in that home will ever cherish it as the sweetest spot on earth.

"The hills are dearest which our childish feet have climbed the earliest. And the flowers most sweet, are ever those

Which our own loved ones cherished till life's close."

HOME AND ITS HORTICULTURAL SURROUNDINGS.

J. C. PLUMB, MILTON, WIS.

Read at June meeting at Janesville.

"There is no place like home." Next to the most sacred ties of social life, in our highest interests and truest affections, is the place we call home, and these are so interwoven in the actual of earthly existence, that the contemplation of one brings the other to mind at once. It is, indeed, so difficult to separate the one from the other, that we hardly look for examples of a high order of social life but in the homestead, and that home so permanent that it may have its horticultural surroundings, in which the members of the family have a personal interest which springs from personal care and guardianship. This does not necessarily imply the possession of a quarter section of land, or of a quadruple city lot; for where a love of the beautiful in nature prevails, and there is a heart for labor and care of natural objects, there will be found some sunny corner or shady nook where a succession of foliage and flowers may be grown through the season, even in the most contracted of city lots. In the vicinity of the renowned Sunday school of John Wannemaker, in the city of Philadelphia, may be seen one of the finest illustrations of the outward adornment of a city home. On the spot where, a few years since, crime and poverty, rags and wretchedness kept close company, there are now to be seen fine rows of brick tenements, each with a little frontage of six by ten feet beside the walk, filled with plants and shrubs, mostly in pots and boxes; also many of the window sills to the fourth story brilliant with flowers. This was so conspicuous that thousands of Centennial visitors to that noted place came away impressed, with the coincidence, at least, of the two lovely sights, the blessed school and the beautiful flowers. In some of the most -crowded sections of our large cities, the flat-roofed dormitories are made gay with plants in pots, showing that where the will is, there will the way be found for growing flowers.

The culture of plants and trees is a source of mental and moral improvement too much lost sight of and neglected. Plant life is full of most attaactive and impressive lessons, of mathematical exactness and perfect harmony, as well as of faith and patience. The natural faculties of form and color find their most inviting school in the symmetry and variety of flowers. The perfect adaptation of the plant, and its persevering development to its ultimate flower and fruitage, affords a valuable lesson, which points most surely to the true idea of human life, as "not all of life to live." Geology makes it evident that flowers, as things of beauty, did not have a place on this earth prior to man's existence here, but that they did appear as the cotemporary of man. Why this,