Hardy Exotic Flowering Plants i6i 



Crocus. — One or two Crocus are naturalized in England. 

 They should not be placed where coarse vegetation would 

 choke them up or prevent the sun getting to their flowers 

 and leaves. Some of the pretty varieties of vernus are 

 well worth planting in grassy places and on sunny slopes. 

 C. Imperati is an early kind, and the autumnal Croci are 

 charming. 



' In the plantations here,' writes a friend, ' on each side of a long 

 avenue, we have the common Crocus in every shade of purple 

 (there are scarcely any yellow ones) growing literally in hundreds 

 of thousands. We have no record of when the roots were originally 

 planted (and the oldest people about the estate say they have 

 always been the same) ; but they grow so thickly that it is im- 

 possible to step where they are without treading on two or three 

 flowers. The effect produced by them in spring is magnificent. 

 I have transplanted a good many roots to the wild garden, to the 

 great improvement of the size of the blooms ; they are so matted 

 together in the shrubberies, and have remained so long in the same 

 place, that the flowers are small.' 



In my own garden the prettiest early effects are those 

 of Crocus in the grass, which come up year after year 

 without attention 

 of any kind, and 

 which no manure 

 or ' compost ' of 

 any kind has once 

 touched. 



Virgin's Bower, 

 Clematis.— Mostly 



THE WHITE-FLOWEBBD EUKOPEiN CLEMATIS (C. ereota). 



climbing or trail- 

 ing plants, free, often luxuriant, sometimes rampant, in habit, 

 with bluish, violet, purple, white, or yellow flowers, and 



M 



