PLANTS SUITABLE AND UNSUITABLE 31 



but sear and brown on closer view ; the earlier Crocus buds 

 and Primroses wantonly nipped off by saucy sparrows; the 

 rest, as yet, awaiting their awakening. A handful of purple- 

 brown Mahonia leaves, a few battered flowers from the China 

 Rose in some sheltered corner, some clustering Ivy or a spray 

 or two of variegated Box these form the sum total of what 

 many a garden gay enough in summer is able to produce. 

 Whether we will or no rare cases excepted for our winter 

 posy we must needs go to the greenhouse. Call to mind the 

 most common everyday flowers that we know Daffodils, Hya- 

 cinths, Wallflowers, Stocks, Crocus, Forget-me-not, Violets 

 and think whether a greenhouse filled with such as these would 

 not be an enviable possession from Christmas onwards ? 



And then, again, if we are not flower-lovers merely, but 

 plant-lovers a very different cult how keen is the dis- 

 appointment when, after months of patient tending of one and 

 another of the lovely green things upon the earth which are 

 to us as priceless gems, we are robbed of the full fruition of 

 our labours by treacheries of weather or hungry bandits in 

 the shape of slugs and snails ! The open ground is no safe 

 place to which we dare trust our rarest treasures, and a 

 sheltering frame becomes a necessity, and sooner or later the 

 frame will need expansion into larger space, where we may 

 group and make pictures of our plants and enjoy them to our 

 heart's content. 



Yet it is a mistake to think that hardy flowers need be 

 common. The finer varieties are always worthy if we take 

 the pains to seek for them ; and it is their earlier flowering 

 under shelter, no less than their own beauty and sweetness, 

 that gives them their claim to the greenhouse. A greater 

 mistake still would be to think that even such everyday 

 things will bless us with a grace so early, unless we lay our 

 plans with intention and remember cheerless winter days to 

 come when summer yet holds her lap full of flowers. 



