272 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ September 26, 1889 
the monstrosity, as I do not remember having met with a similar form 
before. Madame B. Rendatler sometimes forms a number of eyes, but 
I have not seen it like this.—R. F. Jameson. 
[The b'oom sent has the outer florets extended into growths around 
the centre axis somewhat in the way of the Hen and Chicken Daisy and 
other flowers. It is probably due to the formation of a hard end and 
some check, the growths resulting from an effort of the plant to extend.] 
A VISIT TO THE BULB FARMS OF HOLLAND. 
TA paper read before the Nottinghamshire Horticultural Society by Mr. Alfred 
H. Pearson.J 
In these days of steam there is but little difficulty in getting to the 
Netherlands. There are several routes open to the traveller, but sup¬ 
posing we choose to go via Queenborough and Flushing we can leave 
Nottingham at 3.17 in the afternoon, and arrive in Haarlem at 11.20 
next morning. One boat leaves Queenborough at 10 p.m., and if the sea be 
calm or you are fortunate enough to be a good sailor (which I am not) 
you can have a refreshing sleep, and be ready to get up and look about 
you when the boat reaches Flushing at 6 A.M. Having landed and 
passed the customs, we go into the waiting room to await the loading of 
the luggage and mails into the trains, and we have plenty of time to 
fortify ourselves with rolls and butter, eggs, and coffee. Once in the 
train we have a capital opportunity of seeing the country, for the track 
being slightly elevated and the land perfectly flat there is nothing to 
impede the view. But before we look out at the view let us look back a 
moment at the geographical picture. You will notice that I spoke of 
travelling to the Netherlands, which country most Englishmen insist on 
calling Holland. If you can imagine a Dutchman calling England 
Yorkshire you can just as well imagine what a Dutchman thinks of us 
when we call the Netherlands Holland. The Netherlands, as you know, 
consists of eleven provinces, of which North and South Holland are the 
the home of bulb-growing, and hence I suppose the English idea of 
calling the whole country Holland. 
We have left our train standing at Flushing, which is on the Island 
of Walcheren, celebrated for growing the Cauliflower, which bears its 
name. From this island we pass into South Beveland, and thence into 
North Brabant, where at Rozendale the line branches, part going on to 
Cologne, Berlin, Hanover, and St. Petersburg, and the other branch 
crossing, by a very long bridge, one of the mouths of the Rhine, and 
entering, via Dordrecht and Rotterdam, into South Holland. Up to this 
point the land has been principally cultivated in small fields of two or 
three acres, and mainly by the spade, the crops being those usual on a 
farm, and also Broad Beans, Turnips, Onions, &c., &c., for seed. At 
Dordrecht we seem to have reached the paradise of allotment gardeners, 
for as far as the eye can reach in every direction nothing else is to be 
seen. Apples, Pears, Gooseberries, and immense quantities of Straw¬ 
berries are sent from here into our markets. Leaving Dordrecht, we are 
soon at Rotterdam, and then the eye rests on one huge plain of grass, 
which, broken by ditches and here and there by trees, stretches right 
away through South and North Holland to Amsterdam. 
What strikes us most in passing through this stretch of country is 
the great neatness and order of everything. Nothing seems to be wasted, 
and we do not see a yard of land unoccupied. The roads are well kept. 
They are generally paved in the centre with very small thin bricks set 
edgeways and macadamised on each side, and as the canals take all the 
heavy traffic they wear well. They are planted on each side with 
avenues of trees, the shade of which must be extremely grateful in the 
hot weather. The trees are all trained with perfectly straight stems, and 
being trimmed up to one height remind one of the trees we used to have 
in our German toy boxes years ago. They are certainly more neat than 
artistic, and yet they seem to be quite in harmony with everything else 
in the landscape. Another thing which much struck me the first time I 
visited the Netherlands was to see the cattle during the early part of 
the season turned into the fields with rugs on just as we treat horses. I 
thought that English farmers might learn a lesson here, for what can be 
worse than to take a sensitive animal like a cow, which has been shut up 
in a warm stable for four or five months, and turn it out into a grass 
field exposed to an east wind without protection ? But I must not give 
any other details of the route, but hasten on to the bulb grounds. 
The bulb farms are situated on a strip of land running close behind 
the sand downs from Leyden in South Holland to Alkmaar in North 
Holland, a distance of perhaps thirty-five miles, although the greater 
part of the farms are situated on the southernmost twenty miles—viz., 
from Leyden to Haarlem. This line is by no means direct, although it 
runs about parallel to the coast line, nor is all the land of equal quality. 
If it were we should not find the bulb growers giving £300 per acre for 
their best land. In some parishes a large proportion of the land grows 
bulbs, some have only a few fields which are capable of their culture, 
whilst perhaps the next parish on the line does not grow bulbs at all. 
One parish grows Hyacinths to perfection ; another, where the land is 
stronger Tulips, whilst we find also from experience that certain varie¬ 
ties of each succeed best in certain localities. 
In making this assertion as to varieties of Hyacinths doing better 
in one village than another, I shall come under the criticism of 
those who maintain that a good piece of Hyacinth land will grow all 
sorts equally well, yet I bever see such Baron von Tuvll as I do in one 
village, nor such Queen of the Blues as grow alongside them, although 
other varieties on the same fields are no better and perhaps not even 
equal to those grown on other farms. Again, I know a "spot where King 
of the Blues is grown in large masses, and superior in my judgment to 
any grown elsewhere. And why should not this be so ? Apples and 
Bears are wonderfully altered by the quality of the soil they are grown 
upon, although the climatic influences may be very similar. Take, for 
instance, Easter Beurrfi Pear, which is almost worthless at Chilwell, 
whilst at Elvaston Castle (eight miles away) it is grand ; or Rivers' 
Prolific Plum, which produces an annual fortune at Sawbridgeworth, 
whilst in many places you can scarcely keep it alive. 
What, then, constitutes good soil for Hyacinth culture ? I can hardly 
tell you definitely, nor indeed can the growers, for they often have to> 
experiment in order to find out if soil will do them well or not ; but I 
can give you a few points. The hest Hyacinth land is almost pure sand 
with a slight admixture of peat, and it is prepared in the following 
fashion. Of course most of the land has been used for bulb-growing for 
generations, and some for a hundred years or more, but in making a new 
garden the first thing is to level the land. This is done not by simply 
throwing the high parts on to the low, but by lowering the whole 
surface until it is about 2^ feet above the water line in the ditches. The 
land is then trenched to a depth of 6 or 7 feet (the men at the bottom 
of the trench being below the surface of the land). If there be any 
beds of peat they are taken out, as they prevent the drainage of the 
water downwards in the winter, and also arrest the rise of the water 
upwards in the summer, and without this the bulbs would be shrivelled 
up by a week or so of hot weather. Having taken out the peat as far 
as is necessary, the deficiency is made up with pure sand and the 
trenching mixes all together. The cost of this operation varies of course 
with the amount of surface soil to be removed and the peat to be taken 
out. In some cases they get the surplus sand off and sell it for ballast 
to the boatmen for as much as the labour costs. The peat is given away 
to the farmers for top-dressing grass land. In other cases they are not 
so fortunate. A friend of mine showed me fifteen acres planted last 
year foi the first time, which the year before was covered with coppice 
wood, and it had taken 100 men six months of daily work to get it 
ready. 
The land being levelled and trenched is ready for cropping, and we 
may look upon it in the same light as old bulb ground which has 
the following rotation :—First year, trenched 3 or 4 feet deep (some¬ 
times 6 for a change), and manured. The manure is cow dung, and 
is applied in enormous quantities (about 6 inches thick by the best 
growers), and placed below the first spit of soil. In this land Potatoes 
are planted—“ to take the fire out of the dung,” as they say—and in 
digging up the Potatoes the manure becomes well incorporated with the 
soil. Second year Hyacinths are grown. Third year, Tulips or Ranun¬ 
culus, Anemones, Gladioli, Narcissi, &c. Of course different growers 
have different ways. Some manure every third year, some only once in 
four years ; some grow Hyacinths followed by Tulips, others grow 
Tulips followed by Crocuses. But where does this immense quantity of 
manure come from seeing that the pastures look so green ? Ah ! that’s 
where the water carriage of this wonderful country comes in, for not a 
ton of the manure which is used on the bulb farms is made in the 
locality. Most of it comes from the other end of North Holland, 
between Alkmaar and the Hilder, and some comes from Friesland on 
the other side of the Zuyder Zee. “Well,” I asked, “ how do they go¬ 
on there without manure ? The farmers there can no more do withouir 
it than those can who live near the bulb fields.” “ True, but they 
occupy cooler land, to which cow dung is less suitable than to the sand 
land around the bulb farms, and so they bring the cow dung down in 
boats, and load back with horse dung and refuse grains, &c., from 
the gin distilleries at Schiedam.” “ And what becomes of all the 
Potatoes ? ” “ They are sold by auction, and mostly come to England.” 
I had my doubts as to what the quality of these Potatoes would be 
grown with so much raw manure. The land then is manured at a cost 
of from £30 to £50 per acre (exclusive of the trenching). We must 
now glance at the crop which is to be put upon it, and first in 
importance comes the Hyacinth. 
HYACINTHS. 
The Hyacinth has been cultivated in Holland for upwards of three- 
centuries. Pages and even books have been written on its ancient 
history ; suffice it to say that when all has been written but little has 
been proved, but it is generally accepted that the plant came originally 
from the Levant, and that its habitat was in meadows, flooded in spring- 
and dry in summer. Endless discussion has taken place with respect 
to its original colour, which was probably blue, and not unlike our own 
wild Wood Hyacinth. Of much more interest to me than all the dis¬ 
cussions on this question was one of Segher’s admirable flower pictures, 
in which was a representation of the Hyacinth as he saw it about the 
year 1600. Walking round the gallery in the Hague on the 28th of last 
April I was admiring a grand picture by Seghers, when my companion 
said, Look at that Narcissus triandrus albus, fancy their growing that 
in 1600 ” He was struck by seeing a plant which is supposed to be of 
recent discovery and introduction faithfully portrayed in this old paint¬ 
ing. whilst I was equally interested to note that the Hyacinths in this 
and other pictures by the same artist are all blue, with long thin spike3 
and small bells, dotted about at intervals of about 1£ to 2 inches, 
whereas the Tulips were as fine in 1600 as any grown now under the 
florist section. However, although I only saw blue Hyacinths in 
Segher's pictures, it is known that white ones were grown in 1582, 
and in 1767 there were six yellow varieties catalogued. In 1734 one 
bulb of the old double Non Plus Ultra was sold for £133 8s. 6d., so we 
see that Tulips did not secure all the fancy prices in those days. 
The Hyacinth is increased by four different methods. First, the- 
