It is important to the successful culture of Asparagus that it be planted in dry ground, which should have been trenched three spits deep, with three good spits of well-rotted dung. When you have selected the spot, level the ground and proceed with setting it out for planting. Whatever the width of your bed is (I prefer the width used at Versailles which I will give hereafter), a little of the soil should be withdrawn into the alleys for scattering over the roots when they are planted.

Those persons who follow Mawe and Abercrombie will, probably, be tempted to begin planting in March, but wait gentle reader, and do not attempt to do this until the end of May or the beginning of June. If you can seize on a gentle shower about his time, when the buds of the young plants are just shooting through the ground, this is the time to plant. This was first pointed out to me mnay years ago by my old and valued friend Mr. Jno. Wilmot, of Isleworth, he practised it, and I have done so ever since with the greatest success. Mr. Wilmot was one of the first authorities on gardening subjects, and there can be no gainsaying such evidence. This is well known to all my horticultural friends.

With regard to plants the amateur must go to a nurseryman and buy seedling plants from a drill. They should be forked-up great care not to bruise them. In after years he will be provided with a drill of his own, giving plants which will be ready upon all emergencies.

Having taken off 2 or 3 inches of soil all over the surface of the bed, it should be raked level and the rows just marked out, when the planting may proceed. This should be done rapidly to prevent the drying action of the wind upon the roots. when just fixed in their places a little mould should be placed upon them, and the whole levelled by means of a small rake. Should a shower ensue the plants will be safe, but if not, dew them over with the rose of a waterpot and continue this if dry weather ensues.

In the course of the following summer the plants will make a rapid and vigorous growth, and when they have completed their growth and the foliage is decaying, a good spit of rotten dung must be put upon the beds, and upon that one spit of soil from the alley. this being done leaves them in proper condition for shooting the next year; and at Versailles the finest shoots are cut from such beds. But the soil there is so saturated by manure that it does what in most other cases would not result, and therefore, we advise letting it stand three years without cutting, and then commencing to do so, when the shoots will be found immensely strong and vigourous.

We may as well state that the Versailles beds are made 3 feet 6 inches wide, with alleys a yard wide, and upon each bed is planted two rows of Asparagus, 1 foot plant from plant. such beds are generally used here in the second season by filling up the alleys with hot dung, and placing on the beds frames made of old ship-timber of small size which are covered by rye-straw mats. The Asparagus thus produced is truly splendid.

But of all the sights which I ever witnessed, I have never seen it anywhere else, was that in the shop window of M. Jorets, the great epicurean salesman of Paris. the date of it was about the 20th of October, and it consisted of a box of beautiful Asparagus 20 inches long, half of the lenght a most lovely green colour, the other a most delicate white. It surpassed in beauty any I have ever seen from the open ground. The production of this vegetable in such perfection seemed to me to be truly wonderful at a season in which the old roots had scarely lost their foliage and gone to rest.

I fancy that there are few people who surpass our English gardeners as general cultivators. But in France they make the production of various things a specialite, and hence arises their superiority. Thus in England we find but few first-rate nurserymen who cultivate more than one or two classes of plants largely, because there are other who make a specialite of particular kinds, and thus do them as well as they can be done. At each course of cultivation some addition is made to the plans of operation, so that the cultivation of one or two kinds of plants becomes a business, and one, too, which taxes and brigns into play all the energies of the cultivator.

There is also one other thing in which the French cultivator rejoices - viz., his great superiority of climate, which must very largely assist him in forwarding his operations there. They are subjected to less vicissitudes of weather than we are here. The hot summer day of June is not succeeded by the chilling frost; but when the sun shines it does so without any injury. The gardener then has a vast field open fefore him and has only to settle upon some branch of it to distinguish himself. He can choose from the science the part he will pursue and follow it with all his energy. How often do our horticultural exhibitions furnish proofs of the abilities and perserverance of such persons who sometimes make the regular gardener blush at his own productions? But we must remember that the whole weight of garden arrangements born by one individual, is a very different affair from on branch which thus becomes a specialite, being followed by an amateur who from the great attention he devotes to it eclipses his contemporaries.

In concluding this paper we would throw out a hint to horticultural societies upon the advantages which accrue to them, and through them to the world by the full and ample management of amateurs in gardening matters. How often have we seen and with what pleasure the beautiful produce of their gardens competing and winning? These things coming from a place called their garden, but which would have been more properly designated as their wilderness a few years ago.

We will conclude this paper in the hope that our remarks may be found useful, and that we may be the means of inciting the amateur to start as a gardener.

Amersham.
Henry Bailey, C.M.R.H.S.

August, Florist and Pomologist, 1864