The beauty of a design is to have it brought out so that any one can tell what is meant, without being told, as is the case in many instances. To show a distinct pattern with flowering plants, requires a considerable amount of attention and care to be properly done, for which I practice two plans that may be of some advantage to your readers.

To keep my colors from intermixing I use two plans, one is putting a line of some stiff growing plant between the colors, to harmonize and be trimmed to line and height. Say it is a red, I use Achyranthes, and for a white, Cineraria mari-tima, or some such plants. My patterns are drawn on the bed, and they are planted on the lines. Another method is planting short stakes around my lines, not to show above the plants, and running stove-pipe wire on them, and turning the colors to their respective sides. All this may seem a good deal of trouble, but will well repay by a distinct pattern, for this is the main point in all such work, and I would especially advise all who try such beds with flowering plants, to evade intricate patterns, or acute points, and not less than bands of two feet wide, for considerable mass of color is required to give effect.

With plants such as Alternantheras, Thymes, Pyrethrums, etc, and low growing plants, as Echeverias, Sempervivums, Sedums, etc, any design almost can be carried out; the first can be clipped into any form, and the last will not outgrow their position.

My designs are all planned, drawn to a scale, and colored nearly to that of the plant to be used; during the winter months, calculating the quantity I may require - and being sure to have plenty to plant close, as our summer seasons are so short that early effect is required. This study of my patterns I consider a very important part; for let any one go out in the spring without this preparation - and he will surely make many mistakes which this will obviate.

When my beds are dug and made firm, I have them raked smoothly; I then put a plank across, raised on blocks at each end; if the bed should be wider than can be reached in this way, I put two feet into the end of a plank, resting the feet in the bed, and the other end on the grass, or walk; from this I draw my plans, and plant, never treading on my bed after it is raked. For this purpose I use a large wooden compass, rule and line. The compass is extremely useful where you want to follow a curved or irregular edge, setting it to the distance you want, keeping one point to the edge, and marking with the other. The planks I use in the same way when doing all my summer trimming of the beds, thus leaving no unsightly marks.

I mentioned in a late number of your paper that my facilities for keeping over such a large quantity of plants (about twenty-five thousand), is very limited, and had driven me to try various plans, and have them look ornamental as well. The greenhouses are visited by many, especially during the session of parliament, and it would not do to have them otherwise than neat and tidy. My passages being wide enough to admit of a box four inches wide and five deep, attached to the front of my benches, this box runs all round, and is filled with the different varieties of Alternanthera, which when broken up in the spring and put in the hot-bed, gives me a large quantity of it, and gives a fine finish to the benches, as a border.

As to other plants, such as Echeverias, Sempervivums, Pachyphytum, Verbenas, etc. In the first two only offsets are saved, and put closely into boxes made of a uniform height and width, painted green, filled with sand; the last two are made of cuttings, and treated similarly; the boxes are placed on the front of the benches in another house, and look very ornamental, the back portion of the benches being filled with other plants. These are samples of many things I use in this way. Sometimes I save the old roots and put them on some out of the way place, and they soon push up young plants which are taken off in the spring and make nice plants.

With such things as geraniums, when taken up in the fall, only the cuttings are saved, and boxed up in the same manner in boxes of sand, and put on a shelf all round, close to the glass, where they are not much seen, and by the month of March are all rooted and potted up; by this time they can be put in hot-beds, and are in the best order possible for bedding in the latter end of May, which is as early as we can put anything out with safety here. Such plants as Salvia officinalis, Mesembry-anthemum cordifohum and the Thymes are all done in this way. Any amount of cuttings can generally be got from them early in the spring in this way, from which I make large quantities grown in the hotbeds. Only in a very few cases do I ever keep over the old plants, and that where plants grow so slow that one year is not sufficient to grow them large enough to be useful, such as Leucophyton Brownii, etc. All this will be nothing new to practical men, but will be of benefit to many who are not acquainted with this way of keeping over large quantities in a small space, as to which I have many inquiries.