238 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



May, 1912 



and Phlox subulata, var. lilacina below it, 

 is a marvel of color. Mr. Hunt's descrip- 

 tion of Fanny I give: "Clear, rosy pink, 

 with white centre marked blue. Not a 

 large flower but one of exquisite color and 

 form." I have never yet made a May 

 pilgrimage to Montclair, but I know I 

 should be a wiser gardener if I might, for 

 Mr. Hunt's blooming tulips must be worth 

 many a league's journey. 



Nothing I have ever had upon our small 

 place has given me more spring pleasure 

 than the planting which I next describe. 

 A shrub, two tulips, and a primula. The 

 shrub was Spircea Thunbergii, with its 

 delicate white sprays of flowers. Below 

 and among these spireas are the great tulip 

 La Merveille, orange-scarlet, and the old 

 double Count of Leicester, in tawny orange 

 shades — and before the tulips lay low 

 masses of the Munstead primrose. On 

 this primrose which fares so well with me 

 I have enlarged so often and so volubly 

 that I fear the reader is weary of my 

 praises. But to me it is an essential of 

 the spring. With this primrose, with the 

 hardy forget-me-nots, and arabis, the 

 lemon-colored alyssum, the lavender 

 creeping phloxes and with a charming 

 low-growing thing whose name is Lamium 

 maculatum (the gray-green leaves have a 

 rather vague whitish marking upon them, 

 and the flowers are of a soft mauve 

 — grow tulip Wouvermann back of 

 these, I beg!) — the most delightful effects 

 may be had. 



As for tulips again the loveliest of com- 

 binations under lilacs, or immediately 

 before them, would surely ensue, if groups 

 of tulips Fanny, Carl Becker, Giant and 

 Konigin Emma were planted in such spots. 

 And speaking of tulips — the ones just men- 

 tioned I got of the Dutch, the origin- 

 ators of the Darwin and Rembrandt 

 tulips and who thereby have made all 

 bulb-growers their eternal debtors. The 

 photographs of tulips that accompany 

 these notes show how exhibition beds may 

 be made beautiful — they are pictures of 

 the Haarlem (Holland) Jubilee Show in the 



The little Puschkinia. not often seen, has a flower 

 of bluish white, lined with deeper blue 



Tulipa Kaufmanniana. clear yellow, is a dainty 

 flower to associate with PuschMnia 



spring of iqio. The Rembrandt tulip, 

 whose characteristic from a color standpoint 

 is that there is no yellow in its varieties, 

 is a so-called flamed and feathered tulip, 

 with almost the effect of stripes. In the 

 picture on page 236 the first row, nearest 

 the walk, is made up of groups of Rem- 

 brandts: the striped varieties in other 

 parts of the border are also Rembrandts. 

 All the others shown are new seedling Dar- 

 wins, mostly unnamed. I like the ar- 

 rangement here of the gay upstanding 

 flowers against the numbers of dark little 

 conifers. 



In the other tulip picture, page 237, the 

 blackish group of tulips in the right hand 

 middle distance is LaTulipe Noire — "the 

 blackest of all the tulips." The circular 

 group in the centre distance is Edmee, a 

 bright cherry-rose color, also Darwin, and 

 at the extreme left L'Ingenue, a fine white 

 Darwin, slightly suffused with pale rose. 

 In every case they are Rembrandts. It 

 is rarely one sees such fine photographs 

 of tulips, as are here shown, and they 

 give the true tulip-lover a case of Dutch 

 nostalgia. If the pictures bewitch one 

 so, what must those flowers themselves 

 have been! 



I have a friend, what a friend, who visit- 

 ing this very show at Haarlem bethought 

 herself as she gazed of me, and of my pen- 

 chant for these things. Instead of writing 

 me some such platitude as "You should 

 have seen the Darwin tulips ," this dis- 

 criminating and valuable person made notes 

 on the spot of the varieties which seemed 

 most good in her sight, and sent the list 

 posthaste across sea and land to Michigan. 

 "Many women have done excellently, but 

 thou excellest them all." 



Mr. Krelage gave last autumn to one of 

 his English friends, a list of the Darwin 

 tulips he considers the best. These are 

 the ones: Clara Butt, salmon pink; Cre- 

 puscule, pinky lilac; Faust, deep violet; 

 Giant, deep purplish crimson; La Candeur, 

 ivory white; La Tristesse, slaty blue; Mme. 

 Krelage, rosy pink; Margaret, soft pink 

 almost blush; Mr. Farncombe Sanders, 

 rosy crimson; Prince of the Netherlands, 

 cerise carmine; Raphael, purplish violet; 

 and Haarlem, a giant salmony orange-red. 

 Five of these I have grown; the rest I hope 

 to see as you are reading these lines. The 

 man to whom this list was given, a distin- 



guished judge of flowers, comments on the 

 eivdent partiality of Mr. Krelage for the 

 rich deep purples, as shown by these choices 

 of his own. 



Last spring Miss Jekyll wrote of her 

 pleasure in some beautiful varieties of tulips 

 Darwins and Cottage both, sent her as cut 

 blooms by a well known grower. And I 

 was so charmed with her description of 

 these, especially with what she said of the 

 purple and bronze tones of some of them, 

 that I cleared out a lot of shrubbery to make 

 room, and planted last fall the following 

 groups: Ewbank and Morales together, 

 Faust, Grande Monarque, Purple Perfec- 

 tion, and D. T. Fish. Bronze King, 

 Bronze Queen, Golden Bronze, Dom 

 Pedro, Louis XIV; Salmon Prince, Orange 

 King, Panorama, Orange Globe and La 

 Merveille. 



I am not a collector; but, how readily, 

 save for one reason, could I become one, in 

 ten different directions in the world of flow- 

 ers. Tulips should be one of my choices; 

 narcissus another; no one could pass by 

 the iris. The collecting of tulips is, I fancy, 

 simple beside say that of daffodils. The 

 varieties of the daffodil are so many, the 

 classes not as yet quite clearly defined; 

 while the tulip is simplicity itself, except 

 when it comes to tulip species — there the 

 botanist comes to the front and no un- 

 learned ones need apply. Tulips are un- 

 failing, certain to appear. No coaxing is 

 necessary, nor do they require special posi- 

 tions. They may, for instance, grow 

 among peonies; they are delightful, as was 

 suggested some years ago by a writer in 

 The Garden Magazine among grapes. 

 While the narcissus may not flourish among 

 peonies because of the amount of manure 

 needed by the latter, tulips come gloriously 

 forth. The question was put to me some 

 time since by Mr. Miller, as to the prob- 

 ability of injury to or failure of narcissus 

 when planted among peonies, on account 

 of the amount of manure generally used 

 among such roots, the statement made 

 originally, I believe, by some English 

 writer. May I give here the opinion of an 

 English authority on daffodils in his own 

 words? 



"As to daffodils among peonies — well, 

 if you don't get manure (new) among their 

 roots, and only top dress with farm yard 

 or stable manure, using bone meal under- 

 ground, I think many daffodils would do 

 very well: but you should try them from 

 more places than one when you buy. Like 

 humans and others, a rich diet coming on 

 top of a long drawn out poor one upsets 

 matters." 



Crocus collecting, judging from what Mr. 

 E. Augustus Bowles writes of it, must have 

 charms indeed. I confess to the germ of 

 the fever in the shape of several of Mr. 

 Bowles's delightfully readable articles safely 

 put away in a letter file. Each time I take 

 these out to re-read them, I grow a little 

 weaker: and by next July when fresh lists 

 of crocus species lay their fatal hand upon 

 me, I expect to be a crocus-bed-ridden 

 invalid indeed! 



