This section is from the book "The Gardener's Monthly And Horticulturist V26", by Thomas Meehan. See also: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.
A correspondent recently expressed a hope that those lovely winter and spring bloomers known as New Holland plants might yet again come into vogue. In the hope that our correspondent's suggestion may take root and develop to a popular idea, we offer the encouragement of an illustration of a new variety, Epacris, which is one of the most lovely of all the genera of that country, or of its ally in the production of similar flowers, the Cape of Good Hope. This is simply a double variety of an old species, and was introduced by Wm. Bull, of Chelsea, London, with the following description:
Epacris onosmaeflora flore-pleno nivalis.
"This exceedingly desirable and attractive novelty, is a native of Australia; it produces fine long dense spikes of bloom. The flowers have a tubular base ending in the five usual acute corolla lobes, while the interior organs are transformed into a rosette of white petals, which spread out to the full extent of the corolla lobes, and form with it a fine rosette-shaped flower. These flowers are pure white and very beautiful, the spikes being often as much as a foot long".
We know of nothing more enjoyable than a New Holland or Australian house, in the hands of a skilful gardener, from November till May.
 
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