The Garden Magazine, April, 1923 
137 
in Hutchinsia alpina. None the less the little Hutchinsia 
remains one of my most prized possessions. It shares the 
summit of one mountain range with Androsace primuloides. 
My other mountain range is given over, on its northern 
and eastern slope, to varieties of dwarf Campanula. I 
agree that it is difficult to imagine a grouped collection 
of Campanulas, tall and dwarf, ensemble. They would 
be most uninteresting, and 1 think would not grow well 
with the same soil and with the same treatment for both 
types. So the tall varieties are in the flat border and the 
dwarfs are on the morains of the mountain slopes. 
I conform to my visitors’ idiosyncrasies by speaking of 
the “Peach-leaved Bellflower,” though 1 do at times hurl 
a Latin name as when one critical observer remarked, “just 
a common Dandelion.” 1 replied, “O no, that is Tar¬ 
axacum Taraxacum”, which was beyond appeal. 
1 do not altogether agree that it is the jackdaw trait 
that sets us collecting. That presupposes a minimum of 
brains and a predatory habit not compatible with really 
nice garden manners. Most of us collect because we are 
interested in the subject of the collection and the question 
of the utility or practical value scarcely enters the arena. 
After all, if it gives us pleasure is not that practical value 
enough? 1 am not a jackdaw, I collect plants to gain in¬ 
formation regarding those which 1 like. (I suppose that is 
inquisitive!) 1 like Campanulas, Primulas, and all the dainty rock 
plants primarily. 1 want to live with and know on terms of in¬ 
timacy all the Primulas, the Alpine and the Chinese varieties. I even 
aspire some day to growing Primula Allioni. I want to know and 
own all the species of Iris and be as familiar with their charac¬ 
teristics, their ways and their manners, as is Mrs. Wilder. I want 
to know the Alpines as intimately and personally as did Reginald 
Farrer. So with only the smallest beginning and the realization of 
the dream a long distance away, the opinion of the unthinking public 
affects me not. 
My garden is my own. It is not formal, perhaps it has no plan. 
(“They” say it has none). It is often full of weeds and often and often 
it sulks and is most “miffy.” Sometimes it gives a great mass of color 
for “the aesthetically esctatic,” oftentimes it does not. It is still far 
from being the garden of my dreams. If a visitor says, “How charm¬ 
ing,” I am happy. If they do not admire, all right, they can go their 
way to more congenial surroundings—it is my garden and nothing they 
can say or can fail to say 
will ever make me plant 
Petunias and Dwarf 
Marigolds in juxtaposi¬ 
tion on “a rockery.”— 
S. T. H., New York. 
A “Silly Thing’’That 
Sometimes Makes 
Good 
To the Editors of The 
Garden Magazine: 
IN YOUR November 
t last issue Mr. Stephen 
F. Hamblin refers to 
Sansevieria zeylanica as 
a “silly thing.” As this 
plant seems to require 
rather special soil, pos¬ 
sibly Mr. Hamblin has 
not seen a really good 
specimen. 
On getting a plant 
about 12 years ago I 
soon found that it would 
“grow to perfection” in 
a mixture of 2 parts of 
light potting soil and i 
part of clean gravel 
about the size of small 
peas, with all the smaller 
particles sifted out. In 
this, with a little fertili¬ 
zer like bonarbor, the 
plant was put out in the 
PRIMULAS IN A NEIGHBOR’S GARDEN 
“ I want to live with and know on terms of intimacy all the Primulas,” so 
says “ S. T. H.” in whose Long Island garden grow these appealing little plants 
SANSEVIERIA LAURENTI 
Young plant about two and a half 
feet high (see accompanying text) 
garden early in June, near Montreal, and it threw up a fine, tall spike 
of flowers, which gave 8 or io berries from which Were grown 6 
healthy plants. The flower spikes are about 3 feet high and have small 
tufts of greenish yellow flowers which are extremely fragrant and can 
be smelt all over a large room. The flower stalks are like a slim edi¬ 
tion of the flower stalk of Dracaena Lindeni which flowered for me 
two years ago. 
One advantage of the Sansevieria is that each leaf lives quite green for 
several years. I am enclosing a fairly good photograph of a young 
plant about 2 feet 6 inches high Sansevieria Laurenti of which I gave 
away 10 good young plants this year to friends who are very much 
pleased with them.—H. Irwin, IVestmount, Quebec. 
A “Glad” Soliloquy 
To the Editors of The Garden Magazine: 
D OES the culture of any flower afford so many pleasant seasons as 
that of the Gladiolus? Of course there is the anticipation of plant¬ 
ing time and the full satisfaction of the flower spike; provided one has 
become acquainted with some of the splendid new varieties garden ad¬ 
vertisers have to offer. 
But in addition there is the thrill of noting the increase in favorite 
varieties at digging time and the leisurely pleasure of cleaning the 
stock in the dead of the winter when no other garden activities are 
available. The full significance of the increase then appears. 
Here are the Orange Glories. They threw a lot of bloom last summer. 
There was hardly time that beautiful Indian summer afternoon they 
were dug to count the increase. Now, at cleaning time, it appears the 
half dozen that were bought last spring have become, by some strange 
magic, twenty one—as big and fine as those that were planted. Care¬ 
fully strip off the husk of one. There are three sprout scars on it. 
The increase promises to be equally good next year. We won’t 
stop to count the baby bulbs. There is a handful of them. Another 
year I’ll have some Orange Glories to give to my friends. 
This bunch of bright, straw colored bulbs, an even hundred, that 
range in size from that of a chestnut to a horse-chestnut size, are the 
increase of a single Myra Kunderd sent me as an extra in 1921. That 
first Myra opened her tip flower level with my eyes, doubled the parent 
bulb, and gave me the cormels from which these were grown. A dozen 
of them bloomed late last fall and they will all bloom again next year. 
Last summer, the old stock doubled again and produced another hand¬ 
ful of the baby bulbs. 
So the cleaning goes on. John E. Pirie is a little disappointing—not 
in the flower. When he bloomed last summer, I hoped he would throw 
a lot of cormels. There are only a scant dozen. Next year he won’t 
be planted quite as deep, for experience and Richard Diener’s advice in¬ 
dicates that shallower planting will bring more cormels. Summer before 
last, Purple Glory produced none. The corms were so large, I thought 
they should go deeper than the ordinary. This year, planted at the 
usual depth—in the trench the hand plow makes at one trip—the crop 
of cormels is quite satisfactory. That one bulb of Magenta, with the 
chalk white powder on her cheeks, by some mistake showed the top of 
the bulb out of the ground when I came to dig it, and the cormels fairly 
