My Garden in Spring 



in a bed of good soil as much as Nature does universally. 

 So we sow each variety of seed in a separate pot, and 

 sink the pots, and their gradually narrowing sides not only 

 prevent the wandering of the babes but force them to 

 draw nearer, and after two years in pots, if all is well 

 with them, it should be possible to turn them out in 

 August and find a layer of corms, each about the size of a 

 pea, a tender young green pea of the first picking, and all 

 at the bottom of the pot. Raising Crocus seedlings has 

 proved such a source of interest and pleasure to me, and 

 such a means of enrichment to my collection, that I wish 

 I could persuade more garden lovers to carry it on. It 

 has certainly the great disadvantage of a wait of at least 

 three years for the first flowering, but years pass only too 

 swiftly in a garden, and once that period is over every 

 succeeding season brings fresh babes to flowering strength, 

 and I know no garden joy equal to a visit on a sunny 

 morning to the Crocus beds when seedlings are in full 

 flowering. To see a dozen, a score, or better still a 

 century, of some old favourite reproduced in a new 

 generation is good, but still better is the thrill of spotting 

 a pure white bloom in a row of orthodox lilac ones. 

 Forms with larger flowers, deeper or lighter colour, or 

 extra markings as compared with the normal type, fill the 

 heart with joy and pride when found in one's own seed- 

 beds, and it is a happy being who carefully lifts them out 

 from among the common herd with the only instrument 

 really suited to the purpose, a cook's fork. Poor mere 

 man that I was, I stumbled along for years in unenlightened 

 masculine ignorance, using a mason's trowel, old dinner- 

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