OLD-FASHIONED GARDEN FLOWERS. 57 



country, that we are totally deprived of tlie favourite bouquet of 

 Wallflowers in winter or early spring, while it is equally true 

 that, during the hard weather of one or two recent winters, 

 in numerous gardens every plant was killed. In favourable 

 seasons its blooms are produced throughout winter, but the full 

 blow comes in April. Three hundred 

 years ago it was known by its present 

 name ; in this respect it is a rare excep- 

 tion, as most flowers have many and 

 widely different names, especially the 

 " old-fashioned " sorts, so that often 

 the varied nomenclature hinders the 

 identification of the species. At one 

 time the Wallflower was called the 

 " Gillyflower," but the name is now 

 only applied to a biennial and single- 

 flowered variety of the stock a near 

 relation of the Wallflower. More than 

 200 years ago Parkinson wrote, " Those 

 Wallflowers that, carrying beautiful 

 flowers, are the delights and ornaments 

 of a garden of pleasure." 



Of its well-known beauties, as re- 

 gards its form, colour, varieties, and 

 delicious perfume, description is need- 

 less, though I may say, in passing, that 

 its fragrance renders it of value to 

 those whose olfactory nerve is dead to 

 the scent of most other flowers. 



Two errors are frequently committed 

 in planting the Wallflower; first, at 

 the wrong time, when it is nearly a 

 full-grown specimen and showing its 

 flowers ; next, in the wrong way, as in 

 rows or dotted about. It should be 

 transplanted from the seed beds when 

 small, in summer or early autumn, and 

 not in ones and twos, but in bold and 

 irregular groups of scores together; 

 anything like lines or designs seems 

 out of harmony with this semi-wild- 

 ling. There is another and very easy 

 method which I should like to mention, as a suggestion that 

 of naturalisation; let those near ruins, quarries, and railway 

 embankments and cuttings, generously scatter some seed thereon 

 during the spring showers, when the nir is still ; in such dry 

 situations this flower proves more hardy than in many gardens. 

 Moreover, they serve to show it to advantage, either alone or in 



