DAFFODILS IN IHE GRASS AT HUNTERCOMBE MANOR, MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE. 



FLOWER GARDENING IN THE GRASS. 



DAFFODILS fluttering in the lush meadows of our English counties, or the Snake's 

 head Fritillary rising modestly above the grass in some Oxfordshire mead, teach us 

 certain truths. The true flower gardener must sit at the feet of Nature and 

 seek to discover her hidden mysteries, her life, whether of the heavens or 

 the earth, which she dapples with dainty jewels for her followers to fling around their 

 homesteads. No wild, hysterical scattering of flowers without reason, but a judicious 

 selection of the fittest things to lighten the meadow, hide away in the distant woodland, or 

 group in the shrubbery, here, there, and everywhere, artlessly and without apparent 

 plan, yet in very truth with a set system in the mind's eye. Native flowers, and 

 others from sunnier lands than ours, may be used in many charming ways w hen the grass 

 is not mown before the leaves of the bulb have ripened. But if no meadow-land creeps up to 

 the pleasure grounds, flower gardening of a simple kind may be enjoyed, planting Scilla, 

 Crocuses, Solomon's Seal, Snow-drops, Daffodils, Winter Aconite, Tulips, and Chionodoxas in 

 little groups, perhaps, in some recess in the shrub margin or at the base of an old tree. Here 

 the delicate blue Anemone Robinsoniana is happily placed ; its frail flower opens wide in the 

 awakening day, and the bulbs increase freely in a cool, well-drained soil. Little groups around 

 a tree or sheltered by surrounding shrubs are good pictures in spring, as pleasing as the native 

 kind, sprinkling the shady hedgerow and copse with tender pink. 



It is in the springtime of the year that the flowers of mead and hedgerow expand, 

 as if to welcome the warmer, sunnier days. Before the sun, however, can really filter through 

 the woodland, the Snowdrop whitens the earth with its drifts of blossom, a mantle of flowers in 

 February, before the first Daffodil has ventured out of its brown sheath. The Winter Aconite 

 will establish itself in some soils, but is uncertain. Where it extends without assistance the 

 flower gardener is fortunate, for in the spring the yellow blossom in its quaint collar of green 

 gives a fresh charm to the pleasure ground and shrubbery. 



But chief reliance must be placed upon the Daffodils, the garden host that comes with 



