Firminger’s Manual of Gardening for Bengal and Upper India

Take for instance the common red Geranium and the Heliotrope : the power of growth iu these plants it will be observed is as much suspended during the hot and rainy seasons in India as during the winter in Europe the high temperature of the one climate and the low temperature of the other producing effects as near as possible alike. [...] But as gardening on the hills is now almost as largely indulged in as on the plains with much more success in the matter of home flowers ' this opportunity has been taken of adding directions for the cultivation of plants on the hills in the body of the book wherever such remarks seemed to be necessary or with special reference to any particular plant or plants. [...] I need therefore no more than remark in general that the soil met with in this country is principally either a clayey alluvium of a dense nature as in a large part of Upper India or as in the Madras Presidency of a red loose kind of loam apparently the more fertile of the to o. Where sand is a large ingredient in the soil as it is in some exten sive districts of India horticulture canno [...] SINCE the manner in which a garden should be laid out will depend much upon the locality where it is situated and since the disposing of the natural advantages of that locality so as to make them most conducive to variety and ornamental effect must in aggreat measure be left to the judgment and taste of the owner all I purpose at present to do is to give merely a few practical directions which [...] The footpaths being raised five or six inches or more above the level of the borders the water from the well is conveyed along each side of them by channels also a little above the level of the border.