GARDEN AND SHRUBBERY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18617, 12 July 1930, Page 13

GARDEN AND SHRUBBERY

GORGEOUS ORIENTAL POPPIES. These poppies are an extensive genus of hardy perennial plants, distributed through Europe, Asia, and Africa. Wonderfully showy, they well deserve a position in our flower borders. They are hardy, easy of culture, and produce plenty of bloom. The colours now range from white-pink to deep salmon. Scarlet to deepest shades of maroon, and in shades of mauve and purple. These delightful poppies are not at all fastidious as to soil, provided it is fairly deep and the plants are given plenty of room in a sunny position. Plant any time during autumn, winter, and spring. They are also easily raised from seed, only the seed has an annoying tendency to revert to the older red shades. Oriental poppies are invaluable for house decoration, and If cut in the morning, just as the buds are about to burst, then dipped in boiling water for a few minutes, they will last for a week. They flower for three months from the commencement of spring, and if dead blooms are picked off and the plants otherwise cared for they will bloom again during autumn. Colonies of these Oriental poppies are most effective. The large green heads, which nod gracefully on stout steams over a mass of ;:ern-like foliage, develop sat&j-like flowers of the most exquisite shades, most of them with handsome, bclcf centres, with accompanying blotches of contrasting colours. Groupings in the shrubbery are good, massed effectively near dark-foliaged trees, or with a blue background, such as is afforded by some of the ceoanthus shrubs, which produce masses of blue flowers at the poppy flowering season. Intermingled with the colony of poppies, a gypsophila root here and there, of the perennial type, is an advantage, as they help to cover up the bare space when the leaves of the poppies die off in summer. A few gladioli corms may be planted here and there for the same purposes. These can belifted i again in early winter, as if left among the poppies their flowering season would commence too early for the purpose. MOSS ON LAWNS. The growth of moss on a lawn is generally 1 indicative of damp and sour conditions, and unless active measures are taken to check its growth as soon as it appears it will soon take the place of the grass and spoil the whole appearance of the lawn. The first aim should be to remove the moss, and then to encourage the growth of the grass. Sulphate of iron is recognised as a true means or eradicating moss, but if there is much of it it should first to tourn out with a short-toothed rake—an old, well-worn iron rake will do well. Apply the sulphate of iron at the rate of \oz per square yard in early spring, or else disolve it in water and sprinkle it on in solution, giving that amount to the yard. After this has been done leave the lawn alone for a week, and water it occasionally with a weak solution of sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda, to encourage the growth of the grass. Sulphate of ammonia is obtainable quite cheaply, 51b being procurable for 1/3. A top dressing of bone meal or any good complete fertiliser added in spring will prove of distinct benefit. The presence of moss is a sure sign either that the soil is poor and devitalised, or that the ground requires draining. The treatment advised should first be tried, and if unsuccessful in remedying the condition then the ground should be thoroughly drained with under-ground agricultural drain pipes.