Snowdrops are the first flowers of spring. " Fair Maids of February," the 

 French call them. English parks have millions of them 



t'olchicum aittumnale, 



a pink flower four inches across, which blooms every 

 September without care 



English Effects with Long-lived Bulbs— By wilhelm Miller, 5s 



IF YOU WISH GARDEN PICTURES LIKE THESE, DO NOT WAIT UNTIL OCTOBER OR YOU MAY 

 LOSE A YEAR — THE BEST TIME TO BUY RARE BULBS, AND BULBS IN QUANTITY, IS NOW 



[Editor's Note. — This is the seventh of twelve articles that explain how we waste about $i, 000,000 a year in trying to copy English effects actually, and how we 

 can get the spirit of them with long-lived material. Previous articles have dealt with conifers, trees, shrubs, broad-leaved evergreens, bedding plants and alpine flowers. 

 Future articles will deal with perennials, vines, edging plants, etc.] 



BY FAR the most important lesson 

 England has to teach us about bulbs 

 is that they furnish the cheapest way of 

 growing flowers by the million in wood, 

 meadow, and orchard, where they wall look 

 and act like wild flowers, multiplying 

 without care and finally creating visions of 

 supreme beauty. 



For example, take the two daffodil pic- 

 tures here shown. Everybody must appre- 

 ciate their beauty, but how much lovelier 

 it is to see these yellow and white flowers 

 tossing "their heads in sprightly dance," 

 where they come up on your own grassy 

 land, without any sign of the spade or 

 handiwork of man! It is hard to realize 

 that daffodils live as long as apple trees 

 and are surer to bear a crop every year. 

 Yet there is a field near Trenton, N. J., 

 where they have been blooming every April 

 for one hundred years without care! 



From the economic point of view wild 

 gardening is absolutely justified, because 

 it is the cheapest form of gardening. These 

 daffodils, for instance, cost one or two 

 cents a bulb. They do not interfere with 

 a hay crop in meadow or orchard. By 

 the middle of June, when you are ready 

 to cut hay, the leaves of the daffodils 

 will have ripened, turned yellow and fallen 

 flat upon the ground. The same is true 

 of all other spring-blooming bulbs that 

 have strength enough to force their way 

 through the turf year after year. They 

 do not seriously reduce the hay crop, and 

 cutting the hay does not harm' them at all. 



But can foreign flowers ever look like 

 wild flowers in America? Certainly. The 

 poet's narcissus is not native to England, 

 but who knows or cares, save the botanist? 

 The great thing for England is that it 

 multiplies of its own accord, producing 

 myriads of fragrant, starry white blossoms 



in May and bending before the breeze 

 with as much wild grace as any native 

 flower you could name. 



So, too, there are dozens of beautiful 

 foreign plants that have run wild in America 

 with little or no help from man, e. g., the 

 buttercup, sweet rocket, Johnny-jump-up, 

 spiked loosestrife, wall pepper, barberry 

 and marsh mallow. It comes as a surprise 

 to us to learn that these are natives not of 

 America but of Europe. 



The underlying principle is this: Any 

 flower will look wild if it can hold its own 

 or multiply without care in the long grass or 

 in the woods. The costliest flowers in the 

 world will not look wild if they last only a 

 season or two, or if there is any evidence 

 of the spade or watering pot. 



England is the home of wild gardening, 

 and we must go there to see how to make 



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The American trillium grown in England. The 

 English are very fond of it, but they have to pay 

 five cents a bulb 



343 



the most ravishing pictures with bulbs. 

 I cannot see that the English have any 

 great climatic advantage over us in respect 

 to bulbs. They can grow a few kinds with 

 which we usually fail, e. g., the florist's 

 anemone and ranunculus, the winter 

 aconite, European cyclamen, Grecian wind- 

 flower and Apennine anemone. On the 

 other hand, we can grow gladioli better 

 than they. Their early spring gives them 

 twice as long a season for daffodils as New 

 England has, for they have many varieties 

 that will bloom in March. They have 

 a commercial advantage in being able to 

 buy bulbs very cheaply, while we have a 

 big duty to pay. 



On the other hand, America ought to 

 excel England in wild gardening because 

 we have more land and wealth and a greater 

 variety of climate, soil, and plants. Even- 

 tually we must grow our own bulbs so that 

 they will blossom in every dooryard in 

 the land. 



The best English effects with bulbs are 

 easy to reproduce in America, because all 

 we have to do, in most cases, is to plant 

 the bulbs in good soil this fall and they 

 will bloom next spring. In other depart- 

 ments of gardening it is necessary for us 

 to use many substitutes or equivalents. In 

 the case of bulbs we can generally use the 

 identical varieties grown in England. 



WOODLAND EFFECTS WITH BULBS 



I must confess that I reached England too 

 late for the daffodils, and my conceptions of 

 their April effects .are therefore drawn from 

 their books and magazines which I have 

 tried to follow for the last fourteen years. 



In February they have snowdrops and 

 sometimes the winter aconite which makes 

 sheets of yellow there but not here. 



In March they have a great variety of little 



