CHAPTER IV. 
THE LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY PIT. 
THE Lily-of-the-valley and Christmas Rose, or Hel- 
leborus, are more in request in the winter and early 
spring than anything else, perhaps, among flowers. The 
difficulty of getting the Lily-of-the-valley early, with 
the foliage (which is in reality the beauty of a bouquet 
or a button-hole) is not small, especially from fresh- 
planted roots. It is next to impossible to procure the 
foliage and flowers early from fresh roots, even if they 
are potted as early as they can be obtained, which is 
never before November, because the buds are not 
matured sooner than that. If, too, the best ‘clumps’ 
are used, and potted as carefully as you can, and the 
pots containing the roots are plunged into the best 
possible bottom heat (too much of that however will 
not do for these things), yet for all this flowers and 
foliage at one and the same time cannot be had from 
these fresh-potted roots. 
There is no more stubborn plant to foree among 
flowers, and the only way to succeed in getting both 
flowers and foliage early is to have command over the 
plantation of roots so as to get both at pleasure. To 
this end I have given my view of the only method 
