Two-story Effects in the Bulb Garden— By Sherman R. Duffy, 



HARMONIOUS COMBINATION SCHEMES FOR SMALL GARDENS WHERE DUTCH BULBS AND THE 

 HARDY PERENNIALS MUST BE PLANTED TOGETHER FOR A CONTINUOUS SUCCESSION OF FLOWERS 



Illinois 



FOR the best effects, the proper way to 

 giow bulbs is in a bulb garden and 

 perennials in a perennial border. But if 

 the prospect of the imposition of an income 

 tax doesn't even cause a passing tremor, 

 and your one small garden is all the garden 

 you have, then it is eminently proper to put 

 on your thinking cap and old clothes, take 

 up the shovel and the hoe, and attack the 

 problem declared to be impossible by 

 physicists, of making two things occupy 

 the same place at the same time — or as 

 close to it as may be. 



One of my gardening associates takes 

 a vicious delight in early spring in making 

 a close scrutiny of my garden for some of 

 my "two-story" effects — these being cases 

 where by some miscalculation I have 

 planted some perennial directly on top of 

 bulbs and the bulbs make noble efforts 

 to hoist the top story plants out of the 

 ground to get through to light and air. 

 Through a mistake of this kind I was 

 forced two years ago to pull up a fine lot 

 of Shasta daisies in order to let through a 

 bed of hyacinths. 



Bulb planting is my long suit in the gar- 

 dening line. I have planted bulbs every fall 

 for twenty-five years, and still have the habit. 

 I've dug tulips by the bushel and planted 

 them by the bushel, with the result that there 

 are tulip bulbs all over the place. Some in 

 admirable plantings and some in most fiend- 

 ish color jamborees. But quiet is being 

 restored, and I have hopes by another spring 

 to have an orderly and harmonious tulip 

 planting. To be truthful, I am rather 

 swamped with tulips, so they are being 

 moved into the grapevines and into odd 

 corners among the currant bushes, to fur- 

 nish material for bouquets. 



SORTING OUT THE TULIPS 



The man who first invented tulip mix- 

 tures I regard as a reprehensible character 

 and an undesirable citizen. My first stock 

 of tulips came in four mixtures — single 

 early, double early, single late, and double 

 late. Conducting an annual unmixing is 

 an arduous undertaking, but they are grad- 

 ually becoming segregated and capable of 

 being employed for the best effect. 



Parrots, Darwins, and byblooms and 

 bizarres I prefer mixed because all the 

 Darwins seem to tone into each other and 

 harmonize, and the variegated ones cannot 

 compose anything but a variegated mass, 

 so the more the merrier. 



Each year I have added to my collection 

 some tulips new to me, so that I now have 

 something like forty or fifty varieties of 

 Darwins and a similar number of the so- 

 called cottage tulips and a fine variety of 

 byblooms. As I haven't room to grow all 

 kinds of tulips I have very few of the 

 bizarres or, as the children call them, 



The mourning iris (i. Susiana), dark brown mark- 

 ings on gray, is grown by lifting in summer and 

 re-planting each. fall. It wants a dry situation 



"nigger" tulip, because all mine are of 

 dark complexions with dashes of yellow. 



Of daffodils, I have something like fifty- 

 five varieties, and of lilies eight. In addition 

 to these, grape hyacinths, Spanish iris, 

 crocus, scillas, and the omnipresent star 

 of Bethlehem compose my stock of bulbous 

 plants — a varied selection. 



For the accommodation of these bulbs I 

 have two long borders, one eighty by six feet, 

 and the other something like 200 feet long, 

 varying from twelve to six wide. Besides 

 this, I have one tulip bed 34 x 24 ft. in 

 dimensions. 



The one bad characteristic of the spring 

 bulbs from a practical gardening stand- 

 point is that the leaves don't disappear at 

 the same time as the flowers, but insist on 

 hanging around where they aren't wanted 

 for a month or over after the flowers are gone. 

 Having one day a week to devote to gar- 

 dening, the garden necessarily is devoted to 

 bulbs and perennials. But what chance 

 have the perennials with all the bulbs? 

 That is the problem that is in process of 

 solution and I can report progress. 



Narcissus planting comes first because these 

 bulbs do best for me when given a long 

 season in which to make their root growth. 

 They are fairly easy to handle when properly 

 approached. Making an erect growth until 

 after the blooming season it is possible to 

 plant some few plants among them success- 

 120 



fully, and of all the trials I have made the 

 later, taller growing lilies, such as auratum, 

 superbum, tigrinum and Hansoni, do 

 excellently. 



LILIES, FERNS, AND DAFFODILS 



In replanting and arranging my daffodils 

 they have been placed in groups ranging 

 from 100 to 12 near the edge of the bor- 

 der, shaping the group so that perennials 

 may be planted in front and at the sides of 

 the group in order to conceal the dying 

 foliage. For instance, the most successful 

 daffodil planting I have yet hit upon for 

 an all-season scheme is -as follows: With 

 a background of six clumps of a tall-growing 

 fern I moved from the woods I have one 

 hundred Emperor daffodils, with twenty- 

 five auratum lilies interspersed among them. 

 In front of the daffodils which are planted 

 in a group of four deep in the narrowest 

 place, and six in the widest, I have planted 

 peach-leaved bellflowers, and in front of the 

 bellflowers pale yellow primroses. 



First come daffodils and primroses. Then 

 the ferns begin to send up their woolly 

 crosiers and the auratum lilies send up their 

 aggressive spikes, and along in late May 

 and early June the bellflowers, with spikes 

 two feet high, make a fine show and hide the 

 daffodils flopping over in disordered con- 

 fusion. Clipping the seed pods and water- 

 ing the the bellflowers with manure water 

 starts a fresh crop of blossoms and by the 

 time they are ready to cut down the daffodils 

 have nearly all died down, the ferns are 

 luxuriant, and the auratum lilies have got up 

 in the air some distance. 



NARCISSUS WITH FOXGLOVES OR PHLOX 



One of my pet groups of narcissus con- 

 sists of some of the flat cup hybrids. They 

 were mixed seedlings, and among them are 

 some beauties. They are the most florifer- 

 ous of all my narcissi. They have as a 

 background foxgloves, and are likewise 

 planted in an irregular rather narrow group. 

 In front there is a border of dwarf white 

 astilbe and between the dwarf astilbe and 

 the daffodils pink spirea which springs up and 

 hides the daffodils, while the foxglove spires 

 rise at the back of the border. It is slow 

 work figuring out these combinations, but 

 once arranged to your own satisfaction, they 

 furnish one of the real joys of gardening. 

 I don't like to copy book designs. I prefer 

 my own, as it is no trick at all to copy designs 

 drawn to scale. 



Another narcissus arrangement that is 

 particularly satisfactory to me came by 

 accident. Some seedling Phlox divaricata 

 took up a claim on the ground occupied by 

 a group of Mrs. Langtry narcissus. They 

 bloomed together this spring, the narcissus 

 a little in advance of the phlox. I never 

 appreciated the delicate beauty of either so 



