135 



THE BULB HOUSE. 



" Bulbous-rooted plants associate almost as ill with other plants as 

 succulents do ; and therefore, wherever a good collection is kept, there 

 should be a house entirely devoted to their culture." Such is the opinion 

 of the Editor of the Encyclopedia of Gardening, and in this opinion we 

 cordially agree. The roof should be low and not very steep, and the 

 pots should be kept on a level stage, or platform, raised table high, or 

 about two foot and a half, that the flowers may be near the eye. A house 

 with glass on aU sides, and a central platform six or eight feet wide, and 

 two side ones, or side borders, about three feet wide, would form an excellent 

 house for plants of this description, as all of them would be near the glass 

 and near the eye of the spectator. Whenever the bulbs cultivated in 

 such a house become in a dormant state, they should be removed to a 

 pit, or frame of proper temperature in the reserve garden, and kept there 

 dry till the growing season. Exotic bulbs require nearly the same degree 

 of heat when lying dormant as when they are growing." 



Bulbous-rooted plants require a different mode of culture from plants 

 in general, and are, both before and after flowering, unsightly in their ap- 

 pearance, and consequently they contribute little to the ornament of the 

 house in which they grow. While in flower, few sections of plants exhibit 

 a more varied, rich, and gay appearance, and by good management and a 

 proper selection of kinds, a display of flowers may be kept up during the 

 greater part of the year. 



" They appear," says the Honourable and Rev. W. Herbert, " to have 

 gone out of favour lately with cultivators, probably from failure through 

 mismanagement, for certainly they can be sui^passed by few flowers in 

 beauty ; and most of them may be cultivated in a warm geenhouse, if they 

 are kept quite dry in the winter ; but it should always be remembered, 

 that very tender bulbs which are to be kept dry in the greenhouse, will rot 

 if above ground, from the dampness of the atmosphere, though they would 

 have been uninjured if closely covered by dry earth." 



We here beg to be understood as alluding to the greenhouse and stove 

 species of bulbous plants, of which the following genera foms the principal 



