THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, Maech 19, 1861. 
° f all 7" tIiat three flowers, or three rows, or 
r , V( p e g0in ^i ° n in , a , re g u lar succession, without a 
fr0 p , e . nd t0 c , nd ’ m °, n e long row to make one 
colour—a light lilac edging, which, when the March sun 
is upon it, is most charming to the eye. Now, a row of 
Crocuses of different kinds will look well if the distinct 
colours stand at regular distances, as yellow at 30 inches 
• cf a apart m the row; blues or purples at 20 
the^am^ 3 Jinf eS ’ °F i° mches ; and the P ure whites 
re ? ° f 0ur sprin S Crocu ses are merely 
finiSf 1 theSe three coIours i and any one might 
antmg a j^° W ° n 1 thls wise ’ if the standard kinds 
Ef }-T C u disp ? sed of. And as the whole month of 
Shades nf tLe i beS ^ time , m the whole year to arrange the 
arSpn f n ° U ]r t0 °?! 8 own fan( T’ because the flowers 
earlt h nn P 6 f D ’ J would strongly advise you to take an 
fZr PP ? UD1 l of digging up every Crocus “root” 
from round your borders, and have them planted in close 
£ u y row3 ’ putting the colours exactly as you like 
* 866 8UC ,k arra ngements as I am accustomed to, 
t0 s ? e oth f, rs with no arrangement at all, but in 
™ es > great, smail, and singly, or mixed in all the odd 
ways which chances and accidents throw together, is 
enough to make one ashamed of one’s calling, and wish 
that no foreigners may see our spring flowers to jeer and 
jibe at, as they well may. J 
o ® 01 ? e pe0ple y° u cannot move a Crocus, or a 
Snowdrop or a Daffydowndilly after it is once above 
ground till next autumn; but there never was a greater 
mistake m this world. Why, I have moved them my 
lo'rn 8 n- i m ° St e ^ ery year since tlle last wet season before 
18b), which was in 1816, long before I knew anything of 
gardening, and ever since ; and I could never see the least 
8 ^ 1 f tm S a11 , spring bulbs from place to place, 
from the first day to this hour. And I would no more 
refrain from altering a walk, or border, or line, or outline, 
or the sake of a thousand bulbs just coming up to the 
surface, or in full flower, up to the very last week in 
April, than 1 would allow my Crocuses and other spring 
bulbs to litter about the borders anyhow, as some people 
do, and yet pretend to be fond of a garden. 
33ut as the best people go first, and they only take 
good advice, I suppose many of those who noted down 
the way our Crocuses were done at the beginning are 
now gone, and others may be as good and as easily per¬ 
suaded to do that which we know is desirable. I had 
better say our sorts and our arrangement. Four sorts 
made the groundwork of our Crocuses : the large Dutch 
Ye ow; Prince Albert, a light purple; Queen Victoria, 
pure white ; and Sir Walter Scott, white and lilac. The 
effect from four hundred kinds of Crocuses in the same 
space of ground could, in no arrangement, be greater 
than the effect which could be made with these four 
kinds when properly disposed. But where so many 
good kinds of Crocuses are to be had, and so cheap, too, 
as to be hardly worth mentioning, I would have as many 
of the decidedly good kinds as possible, if only for the 
sake of variety in my pot Crocuses for in-doors ; for the 
poorest man in the parish may have pot Crocuses just as 
good as a Lord Mayor, if he only takes the trouble to 
pot them m balls from the borders just as the flower- 
buds are seen, or on to the day they first open. 
The arrangement is this : White, yellow,'white, purple 
white, yellow, white and purple, and so on from end to 
end, making Sir Walter Scott equal to the Queen 
though striped with lilac. The arrangement is more 
simple by saying every yellow Crocus had a white or 
light colour on each side of it, and the purples the same 
as the yellow ones. All the pure whites or Queen stood 
thus at equal distances along the whole line, all the 
purples the same, and so with every yellow, and with 
every Sir Walter Scott. 
Now, from a beautiful collection of pot Crocuses which 
were exhibited before the Floricultural Committee on the 
12th mst., by Mr. William Paul, of the Cheshunt Nur- 
363 
series, I made a selection exactly on the model of the 
first one. I took the best white, the best yellow, the 
best purple, and the best white-and-lilac-striped, and X 
found a better kind—say twice as good as Sir Walter 
Scott, and another superior to it, in the same; also, 
three as good and one richer than Prince Albert, and 
one a great deal stronger than the Queen. Being very 
earnest on the subject, and just as fond of the Crocus 
when well done as I am of alpine and border Auriculas, 
f. a cut bloom of each of the kinds; and having 
them now before me at my leisure, and a row of thirty 
yards down straight from my window, I am sure I am 
not far from the mark I wish to hit; and were it not that 
1 have too many irons in the fire, I would order a potful 
of each kind of these Crocuses this very day. All the 
nurserymen have them in pots, and can pot them from 
their beds on purpose to travel any distance in the three 
kingdoms, so that no one need fear of being well served 
and with the right sorts, which may be compared with 
this account of them. 
Mammoth, the best white and strongest grower. Ma- 
jesteuse, the largest flower of the Sir W"alter Scott race, 
and twice as much lilac in it as is in Sir Walter. Mr. 
Paul’s flower is just double the size of my Sir Walter 
Ocott, and mine are none of the smallest. Marie d' Ecosse 
(Mary Queen of Scots ?), this is the handsomest Crocus 
in the world to my eye. It is in the way of Sir Walter 
Scott, and about the same size; but it is so regularly 
pencilled and feathered all over with deep lilac on a 
white^ ground as to excel all the notions of mauve in 
ladies dresses this time two years back, or rather the 
summer dresses of 1859, and some of them were exquisite, 
but never a one near London so truly blended in tints 
as this most lovely flower. David Rizzio, a darker shade 
of purple than Prince Albert. La Plus Belle, just the 
same as. my Prince Albert, a light purple; and Sir John 
Franklin, a large, really good purple. The best yellow 
was the old Dutch Yellow, the best of all yellow Crocuses 
for the middle season, not mentioning February or April 
yellows. 
There was another fine spring flower at this meeting 
which one seldom sees now-a-days—the old Saxifragcc 
opposite folia, which has much of the looks of Lemon 
Thyme, and grows very much in the fashion of the com¬ 
mon Stonccrop, Sedum acre; but where the light sandy 
soil suits it, that Sedum is a fool to it for spreading 
about, for running over the sides of flower-boxes outside 
the window, and for belting round beds of Crocuses, just 
as^close and as full of blossoms as a belt of Saponaria 
caiabrica that was transplanted three times before it came 
into bloom. Well, Mr. Rawbone, gardener at Bartoston 
Hall, Staffordshire, not very far from Trentham, sent a 
boxful of this elegant alpine to our meeting. It was a 
full yard long or more, and over 30 inches across, all as 
close as any patch of Lemon Thyme you ever saw, and 
in one mass of bloom all over—not the crimson little 
blossom of the original species, but the rosy lilac of the 
more recent variety, with finer growth and much larger 
blossoms. I think the box was handsomely presented 
to the Society, and went under Mr. Eyles’ wing to 
Chiswick; and if so, we shall see it in the figure patterns 
of the new Garden, and it will pay well to have it pro¬ 
pagated for the ballot distribution. It is just as good as 
if it was discovered only last week on the top of Parnassus 
or Mount Ida, for not one out of ten thousand who have 
a garden has ever yet seen the plant at all, or even knows 
that it is just as hardy as the Scotch Crocus, and nearly as 
early to come in bloom, also that it is a native. But, 
by-the-by, can any British botanist tell if this “ improved ” 
kind is met with anywhere in a wild state ? 
Another bedding plant about which the whole of the 
Committee were unanimous in giving it a handsome 
prize, was sent by Mr. Bull, nurseryman, Chelsea. It 
is not often that from fifteen to twenty of us do agree in 
the Floral Committee about the value of a new plant. 
