THE AMATEUR’S FLOWER GARDEN. 133 
mine, carmine; Rosy Gem, rose; Sudbury Gem, crimson ; Sin¬ 
gularity, salmon yellow ; Miss Lake, primrose. 
Helianthus (Everlasting Sunflower).—These large-grow- 
ing coarse plants are useful in large gardens and to make a 
blaze of yellow in rough half-wild places. II. dijfusus, 4 feet, 
and H. midtiflorus, 4 feefc, are the best of them. Divide when 
needful. 
Helleborus (The Christmas Rose) is a grand plant, 
flowering from the end of the year to the middle of March, as 
the situation and the weather may determine. A heavy soil 
and a shady suits them all well, and it is of the utmost 
importance to leave them for many years undisturbed. In 
cold exposed places it is well to place hand-lights over the 
plants as soon as they begin to make new growth, in order to 
help the flowering, and the same practice may be resorted to 
for the production of an early bloom. II. niger is the best, 
the flowers are large, pure white, and resemble those of the 
water lily, though smaller. H. olgmpicus is worth growing, 
but none others are except by the insatiate searchers after 
uninteresting plants. Divide as needful in autumn, but the 
less disturbance the better. 
Hemebocallis (The Day Lily) is one of the best plants 
known for shady borders, and has but to be planted and left 
alone and it will do its duty. It is not a grand plant cer¬ 
tainly, but its bright green sword-shaped leaves and bright 
ephemeral flowers are doubly valuable, because the worst 
situations will produce them in plenty. Increase by division, 
but allow the clumps to spread undisturbed for many years, if 
possible. II. flava, yellow; JEL. fulva, orange; II. Kwanso, 
double yellow, are the best. The variegated-leaved varieties 
are fine things for the border, or to grow in pots for the 
conservatory. 
Hepatic a (Liver-leaf).—The lovely flowers of the hepa- 
ticas, produced in prodigal profusion in the earliest days of 
spring, outshine many of their companions of the garden 
borders, and best of all amongst a thousand suggest the fancy 
that the rainbows have changed to many coloured gems, and 
fallen in showers on the newly greened earth. So persistently 
do these beauties shrink from the hand of the careless culti¬ 
vator, that when we meet with them in great flowery clumps, 
surpassing topaz, or sapphire, or ruby, or “orient pearl” in 
lustre, we know they have long been left to grow in tlicir 
