156 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



conveniently used in the wider area of the wild 

 garden. This has led to snowdrops and snow- 

 flakes, or breadths of crocus, in drifts of one colour, 

 being sometimes planted in orchards, where they 

 take care of themselves, spreading and increasing 

 at will and never giving more pleasure than when 

 they take us by surprise in such semi-wild en- 

 compassment. Here, too, daffodils of the more 

 vigorous types are quite happy. Tulips, on the 

 contrary, are more at home on tilled land than 

 in the grass, as they may be seen, growing wild, 

 in the ploughed Italian oliveyards ; while the bulb- 

 ous irises, of the sort to which the beautiful early- 

 flowering I. reticulata and its congeners belong, are 

 too delicate to trust beyond the limits of garden 

 borders. 



Early summer ushers in a number of bulbs of 

 very distinct character which can be planted in 

 smaller groups, and are more suitable on this and 

 other accounts for the ordinary border the grey- 

 blue North American camassias, the pure white St 

 Bruno's lily of Alpine meadows, the first early 

 gladioli of the ramosus and Colmllei breeds, which 

 are worthy of more patronage than they receive, 

 with many different species of iris. These last 

 are all grouped together, in common speech, under 

 the head of bulbs, though a large proportion of 

 them, like the German flags, have creeping root- 

 stocks of quite another description, and require a 

 treatment of their own. Amongst the summer 

 flowerers, the Spanish (7. xiphium) and English 

 (7. xiphioides) irises, both of them bulbous rooted, 

 are so easily grown and so decorative as to 



