My Garden in Spring 



I shall begin with my greatest favourite, Dawn, a very 

 appropriate name for a first comer. I need hardly 

 describe so well-known and much-shown a flower, but 

 must rejoice in some of its good points. It has a butterfly 

 expression in the reflexed white perianth and the graceful 

 way the segments stand out at rather variant angles, 

 especially where the twin flowers of each stem touch 

 each other, and push the segments forward, and cause 

 their tips to bend over. The slender stem and pendant 

 twin flowers make it charming as a cut flower, and the 

 flat, yellow cup is of such a pure colour that it sets off the 

 white perianth to perfection. I have hitherto grown it 

 in the peach-house border, a warm and sheltered home 

 reserved for new and precious plants until they increase 

 enough to send out their offspring to test their powers of 

 endurance in less secure quarters. It is a long, narrow bed 

 facing due south, backed by the peach-house and its low 

 wall, with water-pipes, heated in Spring, just behind it. It 

 has been a successful nursery for many a good thing, when 

 not only protection from chills, but also constant watching 

 is advisable. I believe many a treasure has done better 

 here, because the border is so narrow, and the delicate 

 things are so easily got at to be fingered, or have their 

 surrounding soil pressed down or scratched up, or some 

 other slight attentions paid to them, which sometimes make 

 all the difference to a plant while still half-hearted about 

 living and growing, much as those of a watchful and tactful 

 nurse can help an invalid to recovery. Next Spring I 

 hope to see Dawn out of this nursery, or nursing home, 

 and waving its butterflies in the rock garden. I have not 

 outgrown my admiration of Weardale Perfection. There 

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