264 The American Flower Garden 



will. Some will be planted in out-of-the way corners in early and 

 late situations for a succession of bloom to cut for house decoration. 

 If skilfully selected and situated, daffodils may have their season 

 extended over three months. Any good garden soil pleases them 

 well, but they have a preference for deep, air-penetrated earth 

 made cool with humus never with manure over a pervious 

 subsoil where dampness will not remain to rot their roots, and 

 where they have partial shade. If there be as much of a tree below 

 ground as above it, so there is as much of a plant that we never 

 see as there is to delight the eye, and we must not forget the fact 

 in October when we drop bulbs into their permanent home. In 

 average soil, a bulb will be buried to a depth equal to its circum 

 ference, which would bring a poet s narcissus or a trumpet 

 daffodil about four inches below the surface. See that the soil is 

 good to at least twice that depth below the bulb. In light, sandy 

 soils six inches would be a safer depth to bury it. It is wise to 

 plant bulbs deeply in any case, especially in cold climates or 

 exposed situations. Their flowers come later than those of the 

 shallow-bedded ones, it is true, but they are usually larger and of 

 a stouter substance. 



Dumpy, double Hobokenese hyacinths are as often made 

 into floral patchwork, perhaps, as the long-suffering tulips. They 

 are the stiffest of the bulbous flowers, but they come in some 

 exquisitely delicate tints, and the single ones especially are undeni 

 ably lovely. In the garden their fragrance is delicious; in the 

 house their heavy sweetness cloys. Within a spaced garden, formal 

 hyacinth beds of one or at most two pure, harmonious colours 

 are effective, but to cut up a lawn into geometric patterns laid 

 on in gaudy colours is a misuse of bulb beauty that displays total 

 ignorance of the laws of garden composition. For high-grade 



