of most double flowers, Madame Lemoine, the double white, and 
La Tour d'Auvergne, the double purple, will make the round 
dozen. The vulgaria type is succeeded by the Rouen Lilac, a 
garden hybrid of unknown origin ; then comes the Persian, both 
white and purple, and finally the procession is closed by Syringa 
villosa and Josikea, which bloom a good fortnight after the other 
Lilacs are over. This leaves the division of the tree Lilacs with 
their privet-like flowers to your next tormentor, the summer 
gardener. 
Among the many Spiraeas we had best limit ourselves to the 
three or four in the early flowering section and of course we 
cannot spare Van Houttei which we all know as well as we know 
Forsythia; this kind has also the additional advantage that its 
leaves color beautifully in the autumn. The Bridal Wreath is 
the plum-leaved Spiraea prunifolia, the one with its flowers 
arranged in small clusters along a more or less rigid twig; 
Arguta we do not grow half enough; it is quite different in 
character from the others, its flowers are spread more evenly 
along the branches and come out very early. At the edge of our 
shrub plantations we shall of course want to bring the height 
down and nothing can be as good for this as our old friend 
Spiraea TJiunbergii. I have often wondered at what time of 
the year this shrub was most interesting and have never been 
able to make up my mind. In spring it is literally smothered in 
a mass of tiny white flowers; in summer among all the other 
large leaves its very delicate ones make it remarkable; and in 
autumn its orange and crimson color lasts until in the dead of 
winter, the warm brown twigs, thread-like in their fineness, still 
make it one of the most attractive inmates of the shrubbery. 
I really must not worry you with any further lists and will only 
ask you not to forget the Bush Honeysuckles and the Strawberry 
shrubs and shall be spared the catalog of their names and virtues. 
Even if we haven 't room enough to plant more than two or three 
of these shrubs and may not consider even as much as one spring 
flowering tree, we still cannot escape the spring garden mania. 
It only needs a small patch of grass and an even smaller Small 
amount of cash to plant a good many hundreds of Crocuses and Bulbs 
Snowdrops on the warm side of the house. And here we have 
before us probably one of the most awful problems of gardening. 
If we are entirely new at the game of planting bulbs in the 
grass we order a few hundred and give them to the gardener 
to put in the ground. The next spring when the flowers come up 
we are electrified and almost stunned to see that they have been 
neatly arranged, either in tidy little groups of exactly ten each 
or in perfectly straight rows like potatoes. The next year you 
tell him to plant them more irregularly and the result is improved 
somewhat but it is not until you get him to believe there is reason 
in your apparently lunatic method of throwing bulbs in the air 
and planting them where they fall or even sowing them broad- 
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