80 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



flowers ? All that you require is a gi'assy spot that need not be 

 mown till midsummer. The smallest nook can be prettily 

 adorned and if you have an acre or two to devote to the purpose 

 the possibilities are immense. To stand knee-deep in grass and 

 daffodils in May suggests surely a desirable and delightfxil aspect 

 of hardy flower gardening, and one that once created will like- 

 wise, without further care, increase in extent and beauty year 

 after year. Planting is a simple matter of lifting the sod and 

 underlying soil, dropping in the bulbs and replacing the soil and 

 sod, taking care to plant the groups in a natural or irregular way, 

 as any formality of arrangement in a grass garden would look 

 most inappropriate. Not only the trumpet daffodils, but the 

 graceful star and the lovely poet's narcissus are all amenable to 

 grass planting, while some of the gems like Johnstoni and Queen 

 of Spain can only be permanently established in the grass. Par- 

 tial shade, if available, will prolong the life of the flowers so that 

 proximity to large trees might be chosen, or a grove of trees not 

 too close to one another might be made a daffodil garden. 



A word concerning tulips. The familiar type is that of the 

 garden varieties of which there are hundreds, important spring 

 flowers too, but scattered through Europe and Asia is a score 

 or more of beautiful and most variable species that can be semi- 

 naturalized about the shrubbery and jjlantations, and, if planted, 

 will bring to the garden new forms and types of tulip beauty. 



For example, there is the sweet scented yellow Tulipa sylvestris 

 of Great Britain, a charming variety to naturaUze ; others with 

 branched stems bearing several flowers, novel in appearance to 

 those who only have seen the solitary-flowered, ordinary tulip. 

 Tulipa proestans from Bokhara is a fine species with sometimes 

 as many as five flowers, of a bright orange red, on a branched stem 

 12 to 15 inches high ; and Tulipa Persica from Persia is another 

 branching tulip with brilliant yellow bronze marked flowers. In 

 all the tulip family, wild or cultivated forms, few can compare in 

 gorgeous beauty to Tulipa Greigii, and in the opposite direction 

 what a pretty gem we have in T. Clusiana, the lady tulip, its 

 flowers cherry red externally, white internall}^ most refined in 

 beauty, yet a pure child of nature, disliking rich garden soil, but 

 happy and long-lived in stony ground among roots of trees and 



