THE JOYOUS ART OF GARDENING 



winter, and in November puts out buds like liiy-of-the-valley. 

 There are a fragrant little Daphne — Daphne cneorum, which 

 shows stiffly upright rose-colored flowers in June and again in 

 September; an evergreen candytuft; an evergreen barberry, 

 with thick, shining, holly-green foHage and yellow flowers, 

 which open in spring at the earliest possible moment; and 

 mahonia, which turns . crimson in October and holds its color 

 throughout the winter. 



Deciduous shrubs one plants sparingly — only those the 

 branches of which are interesting in character when the leaves 

 have gone — such as the Magnolia stellata, which looks very 

 well, with pale-gray stems, and as many-branched as a haw- 

 thorn-bush. As early as January, furry buds, like overgrown 

 pussy-willows, appear. 



For the care of the city gardener is to make the old year 

 forget itself, to prolong the autumn into the winter, and coax 

 the spring into the little garden at the earhest possible mo- 

 ment. Therefore the city yard should be rich in bulbs, its 

 Uttle grass-plot thickly starred with crocus in purple and gold; 

 there should be snowdrops wherever a warm corner can be 

 found — sometimes they are adventurous enough to push up 

 their hard, silver-tipped little spears in January — and all the 

 exquisite race of earliest comers should have a place: snow- 

 flake and Chionodoxa, the color of April bluets; soft, duU-blue 

 spikes of the grape-hyacinth; Scilla, the tiny bells of which are 

 as deep in color as the fringed gentian; while for garden com- 

 pany they have the fragile and ethereal loveliness of the Mag- 

 nolia stellata and the pale-gold bells of the naked-flowering 

 jasmine. City-dwellers are usually utterly bereft of the ex- 

 quisitely dehcate bloom of very early spring, which is the 

 rarest thing in nature. FoUowing these lovely harbingers, 

 come in rapid succession irises, the palest and most delicate — 



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