In the Garden
At a recent show of the R.H.S., some special emphasis was set on Clive Greaves. This scabious is, of course, a useful enough garden flower of no peculiar salience, but it has excelled, perhaps, any other flower as a money-maker for sellers of cut flowers. A comparatively few stems make a jolly bouquet of artistic colouring, and hold upright for a long time, and the growing plant has a very long flowering period. I have known a country-house gardener to turn it to good profit. Varieties of many sorts of garden flower and fruit continue to improve, but I hardly realised till the other day how much of the improvement is due to small local nurserymen. What one, for example, in my neighbourhood, has done for the penstemon is on the way to comparison with the triumphs of Blackmore and Langdon in enlarging the begonia into a sort of rose, or of Sutton's in adding colours to the nemesia.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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