Hyacinth beds are now seldom seen; they were not becoming 
to the flowers. The bulbs were . not planted close enough to 
make an effective mass and there was never a ground cover so 
that the flowers and their leaves rose baldly from the mud or 
dust of the earth. ' A few people have said to me that they did 
not like the idea of a ground carpet in a flower bed as it was 
not natural, but the same might be said of the bed. Nature her- 
self abhors bare earth, her persistent effort is to cover over bare 
places if by nothing better at least by weeds and she must give 
us our cue. 
As a general rule her background is predominantly green 
and here again she tells us as plainly as in words that we need 
more of this color than of any other. So the ground carpet to 
our spring bulbs is right from her point of view. She does not 
let her flowers come up in bare, muddy earth where they will 
inevitably be splashed by any heavy rain. A rainbow mixture 
of Tulips, gay as the name implies, under-carpeted with Forget 
me-nots is just twice as pretty as the same flowers coming stark 
out of the earth. A bed of Ckrysolora Tulips with an under 
carpet of mixed Pansies is rather a good combination or Keiser- Tulips 
hroon and Bullion Violets. One of the most useful plants for 
under carpets is Arabis ". albida; it is ridiculously easy to 
propagate either by seed, cuttings or division, blooms gaily 
almost as long as a catalog plant and although it may look sad 
for a time in midsummer, its leaves cheer up and look quite 
presentable by the autumn. We are dreadfully lazy about 
Darwin Tulips, we really should have energy enough to grow 
more than the lovely Clara Butt. There is a wide range of color 
between The Fawn and the Shah, one cream color, the other 
nearly black. There are mauves and pinks, scarlets and maroons 
among the true Darwins and outside Of this class we have the 
Bybloems, pink, scarlet, maroon and purple featherings on a 
white ground; the Bizarres, featherings of the same color on a 
yellow ground and the Breeders, in self colors. There is still 
another army of Tulips where we shall And Picotee, perhaps 
the most charming of them all, with its pointed white petals and 
pale pink rim; the graceful lemon-colored Vitellina and the 
splendid scarlet and yellow tribe of the Gesnerianas. 
There is no use in troubling you with a list of Hyacinths and 
Crocus while there are still so many plants we really cannot 
neglect. Among the low growing ones there are Anemones, 
Aubrietias, Primroses of several sorts, Veronicas and Violets of 
many kinds and Bugle. The low growing Phloxes, subulata, 
reptans, stellaria and divaricata are invaluable as they range 
in color from snow white through the bright pinks to mauve and 
blue. With them we have the evergreen Candytuft and the last 
of the flowers of the large leaved Saxifragas which I have often 
seen blooming with the ice still on their leaves. 
Two Irises, pumila and cristata, are each enormouslv valu- 
15 
