VARIETY IN SPRING FLOWERS 13 



names were, in groups as they were to be planted: Clara Butt, 

 Electra, and Dream; or, Sir Trevor Lawrence, Mystery, Sir 

 Harris and John Ruskin. The garden beds are bordered with 

 low box hedges and the planting is supposed to supply bloom 

 mainly in spring and autumn. The dogwood tree is a very old 

 one; great care was exercised in building the brick wall which 

 now partly encloses it, to do no harm to the roots of this inval- 

 uable possession. The pink dogwood is a sport of the white; 

 one sees it occasionally in the woods of the middle Solith, and 

 it is one of the choicest subjects for the embellishment of northern 

 gardens, especially in the eastern states, bringing as it does the 

 softest cloud of warm pink into the spring landscape. 



In a charming book describing her long visits to an Italian 

 farm near Venice, Margaret Symonds sets down this sentence, 

 "On this earth, one season is usually spent in looking for signs 

 of the next." In winter, the gardener thinks not alone of winter 

 but of spring. What shall I see in this or that place next spring? 

 Shall that spot be bare or beautiful? Shall it be dull and color- 

 less, a space of uneven soil, a breeding-spot for weeds, or shall 

 I plan now for a lovely flower-embroidered oblong to rejoice the 

 eye next spring in April or May? There is but one answer to 

 be made to this question, and it can be given in three simple 

 words : Plan, Prepare, Plant. 



The kind of beauty, the height of beauty, is made or marred 

 by the plan. Let us discuss now for the little garden two pos- 

 sible plans, one for a border of spring flowers from ten to twenty 

 feet long by two wide, the other for a small formal garden of 

 such things. The choice may be made easily between them, but 

 let me add that no one who has not tried it can possibly guess 

 at the delight that comes from a garden of bulbs, complete in 

 itself, a little entity of gay spring color. And now I think of a 

 most lovely picture in Miss Waterfield's book. Garden Colour. 



