THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



on many soils to have a spring garden of these flowers, naturally 

 grouped and massed, set in turf, and giving us many flowers for the 

 house as well as pictures in lawn and meadow. For this purpose what 

 is chiefly wanted is that the bulb growers should offer the best hardy 

 sorts for the wild garden by the thousand at low rates. These 

 precious early flowers will also have their place in the garden for cut 

 flowers or the nursery bed, where the many new forms of Narcissi 

 raised in England must take their place until they become plentiful. 

 The true hardiness of the flower allows of its being enjoyed in all 

 parts of these scattered islands, from Scilly, where it is grown in 

 quantities for the markets, to the north of Scotland. In Ireland the 

 Narcissus is at home, and there are excellent collections in the 

 College Botanic Gardens at Dublin and also at Glasnevin, while there 



Narcissus princeps at St. Nicholas House, Scarborough. 



is a very well-grown one at Cork, and Miss Currie, of Lismore, grows 

 many of the most precious kinds. In old days the white Narcissi 

 grown in the gardens spread here and there into orchards and fields, 

 and so it happens that now we have to seek in Ireland some of the 

 graceful white Narcissi. 



IRIS. The Iris is one of the oldest of our garden flowers, in many 

 forms too, but, like the Lily, it has come to us in greater novelty and 

 beauty of recent years, and as districts in Central Asia and Asia 

 Minor are opened to collectors, we must have our Iris gardens too. 

 And what so fair as an Iris garden ? They are the Orchids of the 

 north, many of them as hardy as reeds, and with more richness of 

 colour than Orchids. The old Irises of our gardens are usually of 

 the Germanica class ; there is much variety among these groups, and 



