My Garden in Spring 



environment to take opposite lines of action, as may be 

 seen in two of our wild Scillas, S. verna and S. autumnah's, 

 which are so plentiful on some of the sea cliffs but have 

 totally different seasons of growth and flowering. 



I feel I have now freed my conscience from any need 

 to adhere to the almanac for the limitation of Spring, the 

 plants themselves having taken a like licence, but as in 

 the case of house-hunting with no obligation of being 

 within reach of some special town, and the world to 

 choose from, the difficulty of choice is enormously 

 increased, so if we allow that any freshly-started flower 

 brings its own Spring with it, as fire to frying-pan or 

 Charybdis to Scylla so stands the fresh basis of choice to 

 the old. 



I have a strong conviction that the first real breath 

 of Spring that I inhale in the garden comes from Iris 

 unguicularis. I always look for, and generally find a bud 

 or two in the last week of September, or in later 

 seasons in mid-October, usually before Crocus longiflorus 

 is fully open. The scent of those two flowers is remark- 

 ably alike. When we were children one of our favourite 

 games was a trial of nose-power : one of us was blind- 

 folded and the others submitted samples of leaves and 

 flowers to be smelt and recognised. In those days we had 

 neither this Iris nor Crocus to play with, but I feel sure 

 the two would have proved indistinguishable. We then 

 relied mostly on the similarity of the odours of an untimely 

 shed cucumber, begged from the peppery but kindly old 

 gardener, and young growths of Philadelphus crushed and 

 matured to the acme of redolence by confinement in a 



6 



