CHAPTER XXIX 



SPRING-FLOWERING BULBS 



THE increasing popularity of bulb growing among amateur 

 gardeners is not difficult to explain. In the first place 

 bulbs are cheap, and in the next their cultivation is sim- 

 plicity itself. There are, of course, degrees of success in bulb 

 growing as in everything else. The fact remains, nevertheless, 

 that if spring-flowering bulbs be put into the ground in however 

 haphazard a fashion during early autumn they will produce their 

 bloom hi due season. Nor does it matter much what kind of soil 

 is chosen for their reception. They will grow anywhere in any 

 ordinary garden soil, and in the case of many of them they will 

 increase and multiply out of all knowledge. 



But the true gardener is not content with this free-and-easy 

 method of cultivation. He naturally desires to see his bulbs 

 grown to perfection, and he soon learns to know that this de- 

 lectable result cannot be achieved without forethought and care 

 As he goes about the work of planting, visions of the coming glory 

 of the spring pass swiftly through his mind, and he knows that the 

 realisation of his dreams depends upon the taste and skill he 

 brings to bear upon his work in the autumn. 



He may, perchance, glance back to his first efforts in bulb 

 cultivation. How warmly he cherished his first dozen or two 

 daffodils, tulips and hyacinths, and his larger parcel of a hundred 

 or two crocuses ! He was determined to make the most of them, 

 and he spread them as wide apart as possible, and over as great 

 an area as the limits of his garden would permit. His daffodils 

 and tulips were dotted here and there at irregular intervals ; his 

 crocuses were planted in a single attenuated line round his favourite 

 flower bed, and he hoped for the best. 

 237 



