I am always dreaming of having delightful gardens for special 

 seasons where one good flower should predominate*** 



GERTRUDE JEKYLL. 



MARCH 



/ "T A HE beautiful daffodils, or Lent-lilies, are with us once 

 * again, and have taken "the winds of March with their 

 beauty." To see these flowers at their best we must visit 

 them in their native haunts : for instance, in some quiet dale 

 where they spread their cloth of gold, or swaying in the wind 

 on the river's marge under the bare branches, or beneath the 

 budding willows two ideal spots that I know of, not far 

 from the garden. Here they are seen at their loveliest, their 

 rich yellow notched and curled sepals and petals exquisitely 

 contrasting with the vivid green of their sword-like leaves. 

 It is indeed a picture not soon to fade from memory. 



" Earth has not anything to show more fair " 

 than where in the March pastures 



" A host of golden daffodils " 

 are 



" Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze." 



Wordsworth, lover of every woodland blossom, never did 

 greater justice to any flower than in his stanzas to the daffodil, 

 written at Grasmere, when the Lent-lilies were in blossom 

 on the margin of Ullswater, nodding their golden heads 

 beside the dancing and foaming waves. The daffodil 

 (Narcissus Pseudo-Narcissus) is a member of that order of 

 plants known as Amaryllidace<e^ an extensive tribe of large and 

 beautiful flowers found principally in the tropics, our own 

 country claiming very few representatives ; and it is doubtful 



