64 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



white, large and solid, and the plant is vigorous and very tall." 

 It is of course still high in price, five dollars a bulb. 



As gardeners grow old with their gardens, they acquire habits 

 which seem droll even to themselves. At least one of mine seems 

 so to me. It is this — as spring opens and early flowers appear, 

 I proceed to place on a table close to the library door one or 

 two books or pamphlets bearing upon things coming into bloom. 

 One may then notice at any hour of the day, a wildly-rushmg 

 figure bursting from this door, book in hand, making hastily for 

 tree, shrub or plant and standing before it, exactly as in years 

 gone by she has stood with the red Baedeker before the Laocoon 

 or the Winged Victory. It is surely from that early habit that 

 this has come. 



Yet how inevitable is this connection between books and 

 gardening — there is absolutely no highly intelligent gardening 

 without the printed page. As the Japanese cherries are about 

 to open, and the Japanese crabs are soon to follow, the table 

 has a small pile of the bulletins of popular information from the 

 Arnold Arboretum — delightful bulletins of Professor Sargent's 

 own writing, those on Asiatic cherries and apples, those on new 

 shrubs, also E. H. Wilson's book. The Cherries of Japan. These 

 are now well worn, for they have felt sun and shower. They are 

 actual treasures of learning concerning the delicious trees they 

 discuss, and ease tremendously my usual spring agony of know- 

 ing so little about everything I see. 



For irises the new Bulletins of the American Iris Society will 

 be ever by my side in June, as I look at the various varieties — 

 as well as Dykes near by. Peonies bring Mrs. Harding to the 

 fore; her tables are true stand-bys for identification; and then 

 there are two Cornell Bulletins which are constantly in use in 

 peony time. These are numbers 278 and 306, and as I under- 

 stand it, they can be had for the asking from Cornell University. 



