My Garden in Spring 



scarlet and salmon shades. Everybody admires it when 

 thus isolated, especially with the evening sunlight shining 

 through it, but in all lights the purity of its white base, 

 with a wee touch of ivory in its very eye, is wonderfully 

 satisfying against the vivid rose segments. It appears to 

 have one of the best constitutions of all, and once pur- 

 chased should never fail to fill its allotted space and pro- 

 vide offsets for growing on as well. All these beds have 

 to be lifted annually to make way for summer bedding 

 plants, and it is therefore necessary to get the Tulips ripened 

 off as early as possible. So as soon as the segments fall 

 I snap off the seed-heads, and it is wonderful how soon 

 one can lift after the loss of their seedpods has removed 

 all inducement to keep their roots actively at work. We 

 apply the old test of Tulip-growers of bygone days, and as 

 soon as we can curl a flower-stem round a finger without 

 its snapping feel it safe to lift the bulbs and lay them in a 

 dry bed of light soil to ripen off. With this treatment we 

 can generally rely on sound, large bulbs for another season, 

 but we keep a certain number of offsets planted up in the 

 kitchen garden to draw upon should one of our Terrace 

 varieties fail in size or number. So let us turn down the 

 steps at this end of the Terrace and go past these beds of 

 offsets. Many varieties we shall see are flowering freely 

 from the small bulbs, but though as a matter of course the 

 blossoms are not so fine as those from full-sized ones, they 

 are very useful for cutting. Turning to the left, we pass 

 the Strawberry beds, and then the range of vineries and 

 the Crocus frames we visited in February, and so reach 

 the wall and the long bed of Tulips. I have generally 

 planted it in alternate rows of Tulips and Carnations for 

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