My Garden in Spring 



Now come and see the other Magnolias. Having no 

 wall for them, they are grown as standards in the open, 

 and in some seasons this is an advantage, for exposed to 

 all the winds that blow they flower later there than speci- 

 mens on south walls, and their blossoms escape when the 

 pampered, wall-protected ones are frost-bitten. It is very 

 hard to get a plant of the true M. conspicua now, and I 

 was told in Holland that it cannot be layered in the same 

 way as its varieties are. It should be pure white, but even 

 that form known as spedosa which comes nearest to it, has 

 a certain amount of rose colour on the outside petals, and 

 my tallest tree is of this second best variety. From the 

 latter half of April and half through May it is generally a 

 beautiful sight, but I am afraid its head has got up into 

 the wind, and it will not go much higher. The best 

 and quickest grower of the conspicua forms is that named 

 Alexandrina, and it has made a fine shapely tree here, and 

 flowers well, but is an early form, and so Sometimes gets 

 cut by frost when at its best. The flowers are rosy-pink 

 on the outside and nearly white inside, and very large. 

 The sensible one of the family is M. Lennei, a hybrid 

 between conspicua and obovata discolor, for it flowers later, 

 and is seldom damaged. The flowers are like immense 

 rose-coloured Tulips, and after the main flowering a con- 

 stant succession of a few blooms at a time is kept up all 

 through the summer. The habit of growth is rather lax, 

 one might even say sprawling, so it needs careful pruning 

 if one wishes to grow it as a compact specimen, but if it 

 had abundance of room allowed it I expect a naturally- 

 grown sprawling dwarf would be very beautiful after some 

 years. Mine has not very much space allowed it, for it 

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