AGERATUMS AND MICHAELMAS DAISIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19475, 9 May 1925, Page 3

AGERATUMS AND MICHAELMAS DAISIES.

The nurserymen and seedsmen of Great Britain aro intelligent and consistent advertisers in the horticultural journals, and ,v‘heu they have new specialties, or improved -varieties of old favourites, they push them by attractive descriptions of the plants. Our local nurserymen, too, nr© beginning to realise the benefit to themselves and to their customers by similar intelligent and attractive methods, as may bo seen from time to time by reference to the advertisements which precede our garden notes. It might he assumed that such old favourites as the ngeratnm and the michaclmas daisy aro so well-known that thov do not require gloWing doscrip'ions of their merits, but a perusal of the •indemoted extracts from advertisements in -ne of the English horticultural papers will ;how that there is a good deal to be said ■oncoming the attractive garden plants they describe. LITTLE BLUE CLOUD AGFTIATUM. Thousands of our little blue cloud ageratum —this will be its first season —have just been distributed. Little blue cloud agoratum is quite an exceptional little plant. I'or edging it can have no equal. It grows but 4 inches high, and uniformly. It is remarkably growthful, and at the same time, remarkably compact. It flowers with surmising freedom, and right, from the beginning to the end of the season the plant is a cloud of flower. A plant taken at random and pulled apart gave 18 bushy growths, each covered with little, bright holio-blue, button-like flowers; and several smaller growths, all with flowers, remained. Tho colour is distinctly attractive. PRETTY MICHAELMAS DAISIES. These grow according to variety, 18 inches to 3 and more feet. With flowers, in size, from the diminutive, profusely star-blos-somed Ericoides to tho big (3 and more inches across) Amelins typo. In form: some densely double, some half double, others l rue singles, singles with several circles of 'regularly arranged florets, singles with !00-ely disposed florets, singles cup-shaped: -villi florets strap-shaped, or narrow and minted or waved irregularly or tip-reflexed. In colour: white, deep red, rich and flesh pinks* bright and dark manves, lilacs, purifies, shades of blue, ultramarine. The attractiveness and uses of this excellent border plant, flowering summer to late autumn and quite hardy, are beyond question.