224 State Horticultural Society. 



ing their visits. Nothing adds more to the beauty of a front yard, they 

 demand but small space, and they require no care beyond the annual 

 taking up and replanting. But if this paper was intended to be of any 

 immediate, practical service, it should have been read four months ago, 

 for it is now too late to plant. When I was a boy and would hang in 

 admiration over the blooming hyacinths of our neighbor, Mrs. Baird, 

 she would give me an armful of the green bulbs, with the live tops on 

 them, which I would take home and conscientiously plant, but I never 

 got a bloom, because that was not the right way to go about it. For th? 

 last five years I have had at my home in Jonesboro fine beds of bulbs, 

 over the flowers of which my lady friends would go into raptures, and 

 want to set about growing some for themselves at once, but their ardor 

 would be dampened when informed that they would have to wait six 

 months more for bloom. 



So get your bulbs next October, have the ground, where you wish 

 the bed, spaded deep, and plenty of rotted manure worked in. But why 

 fertilize if the blooms are already in the bulbs ? You do this so that when 

 the plants are through blooming, the roots will take up nourishment 

 and cause the bulbs to grow and form buds for the following year. A 

 hyacinth or narcissus will, as said, bloom in a glass of water or in a pot, 

 but the bulb is then worthless and must be thrown away, for the muscle 

 and sinew have been exhausted by blooming and no more has been sup- 

 plied. Wait to plant as long as you dare, so as to get them in the ground 

 just before the first sharp freeze, usually the middle or last of October. 

 Plant the narcissus and hyacinths with the tops of the bulbs about five 

 inches deep, and the tulips about four. When real cold weather sets in, se- 

 lect a day soon after it begins, when the ground is frozen, and cover the 

 bed with a thick coat of fresh, strawy manure from the horse stall. It will 

 on one hand keep the bulbs from going to zero during a blizzard, and 

 on the other hand, from thinking some warm, winter day that it is time to 

 wake up. I think it advisable to leave the mulch on in the spring, as it 

 will keep the bed moist during June, so that the bulbs can develop for 

 next season. A rectangular bed is as pretty as one of a fancy shape and 

 much less trouble to make. It is as well to mix colors and not to aim 

 at ribbon effects, which will prove more costly, and belong rather to parks 

 and landscape gardening. In tulips, for instance, by mixing varieties 

 I had a bed that was beautiful for six weeks last spring, whereas if only 

 one variety had been planted it would not have lasted more than two 

 weeks. But for the best effect hyacinths, tulips and narcissus should not 

 be put in the same bed. Moreover, of the three most valuable kinds of 

 narcissus — ^the Trumpet, Polyanthus and Poeticus, each should be sepa- 



