CHAPTER VIII 

 Primulas 



I USED to think this garden was unsuitable for Primulas 

 other than the commonest forms of Primroses, but 

 patience and a certain amount of manoeuvring have some- 

 what increased the possibilities, though still an extra hot 

 and dry year like 1911 frizzles up the double garden 

 varieties and parches P. rosea beyond recovery. The 

 earliest to flower is P. megasiaefolia, or perhaps I should say 

 to try to flower, for from December onward this foolishly 

 precocious plant gets a flower-bud irretrievably damaged 

 about once a fortnight, and seldom succeeds in opening 

 one. P. cashmireana often shoots up a mushroom-shaped 

 mass of buds in January only to be blackened and end in 

 decay, but P. marginata manages better and, by keeping 

 close under its leaves at first, opens the earliest of its 

 flowers with the Hepaticas. It is such a good-tempered 

 and lovely thing, both in flower and leaf, I wonder one 

 does not see it oftener. In a real Primrose-beloved 

 garden it should be possible to have edgings of it, and how 

 lovely they would be. Here I have to find a cool corner 

 with stones to keep its roots moist to make it happy, and 

 some clumps in the rock garden reward my care with a 

 fine show of flowers : one is a particularly blue form, and 

 having deeply-toothed leaves is good to look at all its days 

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