THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
37 
winter, and a rich surfacing of flowers in the spring, and at 
the proper time the beds should be cleared of these and the 
bulbs together, for the customary summer planting. 
The supposed expensiveness of bulbs, that deters people 
from using them largely, is a most injurious fallacy, for they 
are by no means so costly as supposed. But there is another 
impediment, and that is the supposition that the soil must 
be prepared in some mysterious manner with elaborate com¬ 
posts, and processes which few understand. Now the simple 
truth is, that for all the bulbs and herbaceous plants com¬ 
monly used for masses in the flower garden, the only prepa¬ 
ration necessary is to break up the ground well and manure 
it moderately, leave it a few days to settle, and then plant. 
If the soil is wet it must be drained; but that is necessary 
for everything else cultivated in it. Scarcely anything worth 
having will grow in ground where the drainage is not either 
naturally or artificially sufficient to remove surplus water 
quickly, so that the soil is never more than reasonably moist. 
All the bulbous-rooted plants like a rich sandy soil, but there 
is no occasion for composts, and all tedious operations are 
unnecessary. 
Now as to the cost. All the best bedding tulips may be 
obtained at from five shillings to nine shillings per hundred ; 
and the most expensive kinds will never cost more than four 
shillings per dozen. A reference to any of the bulfy catalogues 
will show that if good colours are the desiderata without 
reference to the peculiar excellence of varieties delicately 
striped or finely formed, a few pounds will go a long way to 
make the garden an agreeable attachment to the house during 
the early months of the year, instead of, as it too often is at 
that season, a dreary wilderness. In all the bulb catalogues 
u mixtures ” are advertised at a cheap rate. When these 
mixtures are in distinct colours they may be very useful for 
those who are obliged to make the most of a small outlay. But 
mixtures of colours are objectionable in geometric arrange¬ 
ments, and in this scheme we should admit only one mixture, 
and that would bo of hyacinths. If we were to plant a set of 
beds like those in the scheme above, we would have the 
edgings of snowdrops and crocuses all through. The two 
crocus beds we would also edge, by planting blue crocus 
inside the line of the snowdrops ; all the rest of the beds we 
should make the second line of yellow crocus. The four 
