Nursery is a garden or portion of a garden devoted to the rearing of trees and shrubs during their early stages of growth, before they are of a size desired for the fruit or pleasure grounds. As every tenant of the nursery is separately discussed in these pages', no more is required here than to make a few general observations.

Extent, Soil, Situation, &-C

With respect to the proper extent of a nursery, whether for private use, or for public supply, it must be according to the quantity of plants required, or the demand for sale; if for private use, from a quarter or half an acre to five or six acres may be proper, which must be regulated according to the extent of garden ground and plantations it is required to supply with the various sorts of plants, and if for a public nursery, not less than three or four acres of land will be worth occupying as such, and from that to fifteen or twenty acres, or more, may be requisite according to the demand, though some occupy forty or fifty acres in nursery ground. A nursery may be of any moderately light land, that is fifteen or eighteen inches depth of good working staple; but if two or three spades deep, it will be the greater advantage. A good fresh fat soil, such as any good pasture, which having the sward trenched to the bottom is excellent for the growth of trees, a rich soil fit for corn is also extremely proper, or any other good soil of the nature of common garden earth is also very well adapted for a nursery.

As to situation; if this is rather low it will be better, because it is naturally warmer, and more out of the power of cutting and boisterous winds than a higher situation, though if it happens where some parts of the ground are high and some low, it is an advantage, the better suiting the nature of the different plants. It is also of advantage to have a nursery ground fully exposed to the sun and air, and where there is the convenience of having water, for the occasional watering.

Mode Of Arranging The Plants

In the distribution of the various sorts of plants in the nursery, let each sort be separate, in lines or nursery rows, to stand till arrived at a proper growth for drawing off for the garden and plantations, placing the fruit trees, stocks, etc, for grafting and budding upon, in rows two feet asunder, and half that distance in the rows, varying the distance both ways, according to the time they are to stand; the shrub kind should likewise be arranged in rows about two feet asunder, and fifteen or eighteen inches distant in each line; and as to herbaceous plants, they should generally be disposed in four feet wide beds, in rows from six to twelve or eighteen inches asunder, according to their nature of growth, and time they are to stand.

General Culture

Those designed as stocks for fruit-trees should have their stems generally cleared from lateral shoots, but never to shorten the leading shoot unless it is decayed or becomes very crooked, in which case it may be proper to cut it down low in spring, and it will shoot out again - training the main shoot for a stem, with its top entire, for the present, till grafted or budded.

Forest trees should also be encouraged to form straight clean stems by occasional trimming of the largest lateral branches, which will also promote the leading top shoot in aspiring farther in height, always suffering that part of each tree to shoot at full length, unless where the stem divides into forks - in which case trim off the weakest, and leave the straightest and strongest shoot or branch to shoot out at its proper length, to form the top.

The different sorts of shrubs may either be suffered to branch out in their own natural way, except just regulating very irregular growths, or some may be trained with single clean stems, from about a foot to two or three feet high.

Every winter or spring the ground between the rows of all transplanted plants, in the open nursery-quarters, must be dug: this is particularly necessary to all the tree and shrub kind that stand wide enough in rows to admit the spade between; which work is, by the nurserymen, called turning-in, the most general season for which work is any time from October until March. But the 60oner it is done the more advantageous it will prove to the plants.

The ground is to be dug but half spade deep, proceeding row by row, turning the top of each spit clean to the bottom, that all weeds on the surface may be buried a proper depth to rot.

In summer be remarkably attentive to keep all clean from weeds. The seedlings growing close in the seminary-beds must be hand-weeded; but to all plants that grow in rows introduce the hoe. As any quarter or compartment of the nursery-ground is cleared from plants, others must be substituted in their room from the seminary; but the ground should previously be trenched and lie some time fallow, giving it also the addition of manure if it shall seem proper.

It will be of advantage to plant the ground with plants of a different kind from those which occupied it before. The tender or exotic plants of all kinds require shelter only from frost whilst young, and by degrees become hardy enough to live in the open air. Such of them as are seedlings, in the open grounds, should be arched over with hoops or rods at the approach of winter, in order to be sheltered with mats in severe weather; and those which are in pots, either seedlings or transplanted plants, should be removed in October, in their pots, to a warm sunny place, sometimes sheltered with hedges, etc, placing some close under the fences, facing the sun, where they may have occasional covering, either of glass lights or mats, etc, from frost, observing of all those sorts here alluded to that they are gradually to be hardened to the open ground, and need only be covered in frosty weather. At all other times let them remain fully exposed, and by degrees, as they acquire age and strength, inure them to bear the open air fully, so that, when they arrive at from two or three to four or five years old, they may be turned out in the open ground. - Abercrombie.