60 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, May 3, 1859. 
middling. There are hundreds of gardeners who have 
had as much practice as I have, hut there are very few 
gardeners indeed of that class who have had one-tenth of 
the experience I obtained in pinching for room : therefore, 
one cannot be far wrong in saying that nine-tenths of 
our best gardeners are not aware to this day of what may 
be done with spring flowers, and the extent to which 
they may be indulged without the least harm or obstruc¬ 
tion to the bedding plants. 
When the bedding-out system was taken up, twenty 
years back, on scientific principles, as one might say, but 
in reality on the plan of fashionable colouring, as ladies 
choose their dresses and make their fal-dals in worsted 
work, some of us were in the very thick of it; and, to fill 
up a gap in the winter, the leader of that crew adopted 
and recommended as a makeshift to stick the beds with 
boughs of evergreens, for which he was handsomely taken 
to task at the time. The practice took, however; and, 
like all cheap movements, it soon righted itself, and ever¬ 
greens—not mere boughs—were soon made use of; and 
no one now thinks of having bare beds all the winter if 
he or she can evergreen them that way. Even the 
expense of having suitable evergreens in pots ready to 
put in is now done away with; for no pots are needed 
that way. The plants soon take to the system of re¬ 
moving twice in one year —first, to decorate for the 
winter; and next, to make room for bedders, which 
brings us to the present time. 
Spring flowers are now sufficiently proved to be just as 
safe to move twice a year as the evergreens under the 
same circumstances. No pots are needed for the one 
more than for the other. Spring bulbs, more particularly, 
are much safer out of pots when we come to lift them. 
Not one of the thousands of Tulips which spring-decorate 
the beds at the Crystal Palace, or the Hyacinth either, 
is ever put in pots; and they are safely removed long 
before they have finished their growth. But in private 
gardens I now believe—indeed, I am quite sure—that 
the surest way is to remove all spring bulbs as soon as 
they are out of bloom, to transplant them carefully else¬ 
where, and to give them a good soaking of water; then 
to mulch the ground between them, and to see they do 
not suffer by want of water through the rest of their 
growing season. 
Bulbs of all border sorts may also be so arranged in 
ribbon borders as not to require lifting but once in three 
or four years—that is, to have them planted in straight 
rows, so as that bedding plants can be planted just be¬ 
hind or in advance of them. The principal ribbon border 
at the Experimental is so arranged; and we find it very 
convenient in more ways than one. Early in the spring, 
when the bulbs are breaking ground, you can go to such 
a border and lift a patch of Hyacinths, or Tulips, or 
Narcissi, or bulbous Iris, or, indeed, of any kind of bulb ; 
and if the kind is well established it will lift, and pot, and 
force for the conservatory, just as well as if it had been 
potted in the October previous. When the same bulbs, 
or others of the same heights, come out, after flowering 
in-doors, the bulbs being reduced and half broken, they 
are ready to fill up the gaps again as if nothing had 
happened. By that system, it is surprising how many 
kinds of bulbs may be had in one row, or one border, 
and never seem to be in the way or out .of place. 
There is a prejudice about Tulips and Hyacinths, 
many people believing it essential for them to be taken 
up and dried every summer; but there is not the slightest 
reason for doing so oftener than once in three years, if 
so often. They are more safe from accident, in the 
ground, if people would mind they are there, and not 
disturb them at the time of bedding out, or when the 
bedders are lifted, or cleared from the border. The 
place may be smoothed, or raked, over in the autumn; 
and when the leaves are fairly above ground in the 
spring is the right time to fork these borders. Never 
use a spade among bulbs,—a steel fork is the right tool, 
and will loosen the ground as deep as is good for the 
plants, present or to come. Botten dung, fresh earth, 
and liquid manure, are the requisites to keep a border 
in good heart; and the end of March is the best time 
to apply them, to strengthen the bulbs, and be ready for 
the summer crop. 
When a crop of anything is in rows, whether they 
are bedders, or for the pot or table, liquid manure of 
any strength may be applied in the centre between the 
rows with less risk, or danger, than in any other way. 
I have often, with my own hands, poured down large 
quantities of the very strongest liquid manure between 
rows of plants, one drop of which would be destruction 
to any one of them, if it touched the leaves or roots ; but 
filtering to the roots through a few inches of soil all harm 
is avoided, which goes to show that a fair porous surface 
of earth is the best and safest fixer of ammonia, and 
all over-strong matter in the liquid. Every one of my 
own bulbs, from Crocus to Hesperantha, gets it every 
spring, from a place which one would shudder at the 
idea of, and I never lose a leaf. I quite agree with 
clarifying liquid manure for pot culture, and in the hands 
of those who do not know, practically, what a plant can 
digest, or what the strength of their liquid is. But to 
keep a bed, or border, iu good heart for a whole season, 
at the least possible expense, have no recourse to 
clarifying the goodness out of the stuff, but give it 
to the plants fresh from the stable, cow-house, or 
piggery, or where it may be got much stronger, and one 
good soaking of it will last the whole of that season ; 
the spring is the right time to apply it. Then, in 
June, if a handful of mould from below the surface is 
as good as a smelling-bottle, you may depend upon a 
good show of Boses, and most bedding plants, if the 
beds wanted any assistance that way. The old florists 
who placed four or five inches thick of strong dung at 
the very bottom of their beds, and two feet below their 
plants, were much wiser in their generation than those 
of us who supply rotten dung on or near the surface. 
Mr. Bivers has been recommending, for a long time, one 
or two thorough good soakings of the richest liquid 
manure to the Bose-beds in the winter; and if Boses 
are ever to come out healthy on a thin, poor, sandy soil, 
that is just what will do it. When flower-beds and 
borders get exhausted, by cropping, this strong liquid 
is very much better for them than rotten dung, and now 
is the time to apply it. 
Apart from bulbs, the rest of the spring flowers are 
easy enough to transplant out of the beds to make room 
for bedders ; the older they get the more easy the trans¬ 
planting. Like the evergreens for winter use, they will 
soon get so accustomed to this way of changing, and will 
make their best roots so much nearer the surface, and 
so much more closely together, that, without the change, 
they would soon actually get out of a vigorous condition 
altogether. At all events, such is the way that the 
evergreens for wintering beds turn out. after a few years 
of a succession of changes between, the beds and the 
reserve ground. In the midst of the frost and dry 
easterly winds, early in Passion-week, I removed almost 
my whole collection of hardy and half-hardy bulbs; not 
for bedding purposes, however, but to have a better ar¬ 
rangement of' sorts, and to allow me to alter and amend 
the border for them. They came dropping in one after 
another, and they had to be planted anyhow. But if 
the kind readers of Tiie Cottage Gaedenee go on 
supplying me in the same ratio for a few more years, my 
border, without a change, would be the best example 
in the country of too much of a good thing being almost 
as bad as none at all. Erom that one trial, and from 
knowing it to be a fact that several of the kinds of 
these bulbs had never been removed before by anyone, 
when in the midst of their growth ; and from another, 
and the best fact of all, the change to rain on Easter 
Sunday, and the warm days which succeeded, all my 
