66 
TIIE HOME GARDEN. 
other dark-green background, they are displayed to great 
advantage. 
Dahlias are handsome, showy flowers, also with great 
variety of coloring, requiring jflenty of sun, and disposed 
to make themselves at home in almost any soil. The tall 
plants must have plenty of room, and the pompone species, 
from eighteen inches to two feet high, are more desirable 
for small spaces. These range through all the shades of 
maroon, crimson, rose, pink, blush, white, scarlet, yellow, 
purple, vermilion, etc. 
The most beautiful perhaps, although the least varied, 
of all the summer bulbs is the tuberose, with its waxy pet¬ 
als, bearing the faintest tint of rose, and its delicious per¬ 
fume. It is a thoroughly tropical plant, and requires a 
great deal of heat, a long, warm summer being the most 
favorable for flowering out of doors. 
It is necessary to start the plants either in a greenhouse 
or a warm, sunny window early in the spring, and by the 
middle or last of June they may be turned carefully out 
of the pots into rich garden soil. The flower stalks, like 
those of the gladiolus and dahlia, should be firmly tied to 
stakes, and the blossoms will appear about the first of Sep¬ 
tember. The flowering may be kept up in cold weather by 
carefully repotting and moving them back to the house, but 
bulbs that have once blossomed never bloom again. If plant¬ 
ed in August, they will come into flower during the winter. 
“ Some people,” says a cultivator, “grow this fine bul¬ 
bous plant as they would onions, by merely covering 
the top of the crown, and then complain that they are a 
very uncertain flower at best. Now, if they would only 
plant them deeply, say five or six inches, the foliage would 
not wither and die so quickly during a dry time.” 
The amaryllis, to which family the tuberose belongs, 
generally known as the Jacobean lily, or A. Formosissima , is 
a low plant, which usually produces two flowers of a lily 
