XIV 

 PLANNING A SPRING GARDEN 



Autumn is the Time to Make a Spring Garden 



Any one may have a spring garden. Flowers in July and 

 August are had at the expense of much weeding and warfare 

 with insects, but from March until the end of May flowers 

 may be had for Kttle more than the putting of bulbs ia the 

 ground. 



If ever was given a prodigal return in beauty for a small 

 expenditure of time and labor and money, it is by this same 

 blessed race of spring-flowering bulbs. For city folk and 

 suburbanites, for folk on northern farms, where the long, 

 hard winter seems as if it would never end, the blossoms of 

 the early spring which seem to come of their own accord are 

 a peculiar delight. 



What Bulbs to But 



Catalogues show a bewildering range of varieties. It is 

 cheerful for the gardener with a modest pocketbook to re- 

 member that the inexpensive old sorts are often not only the 

 safest, but, moreover, the best. The low price itself is due 

 to their being extremely easy to grow. The fact that a flower 

 is "common" does not make it the less lovely — the sky and 

 the sunshine and the green grass are common also. One may 

 have a wealth of poets' narcissus in May — and once in the 

 garden it "lives happily forever after" — ^for the price of a few 

 expensive hyacinths, which are by no means so hardy nor so 



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