Volume XVI 
Naturalizing Bulbs on 
the Home Grounds 
HOW TO HAVE A GLORIOUS MASS OF BLOOM IN EARLIEST SPRING WHEN FLOWERS 
GIVE THE KEENEST PLEASURE—AN ANNUAL JOY FOR A FEW DOLLARS AND A LITTLE 
LABOR SPENT NOW—WHAT TO PLANT, WHERE, HOW, AND ALL THE DETAILS 
by E. O. Calvene 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves 
E VERYTHING lovely in the world is rolled up in a bulb! 
Positively it is—every spring I am more certain of it— 
and you can buy bulbs and plant them and have all this loveliness, 
for about one-tenth the ex¬ 
penditure of money and 
energy which a correspond¬ 
ing display of any other flow¬ 
ers would demand. 
If we can have the moon- 
whiteness of the snowdrop, 
the heavenly blue of the 
scilla, the starry brightness of 
ornithogalums, the rainbow 
hues of the crocus, and the 
sunlight of daffodils all about 
us, and have them year after 
year without doing a thing 
but let them alone after the 
first planting is made, what 
are we thinking of not to? 
Of course all flowers are 
beautiful, but there is a 
thrilling loveliness about the 
very first flowers which the 
summer’s proudest blossom 
cannot boast. If you doubt 
it, try having some. You 
will be convinced as soon as 
the first little shoot thrusts 
itself up through the barren 
earth; if it should come 
through snow, beware! It 
brings a kind of delight that 
is almost madness — a wild 
dancing of the pulse and a 
childish impulse to jump up 
and down and shout. They 
make the heart young, do 
spring flowers; and a young 
heart means youth, whether 
at eight or eighty. 
In all the multitude of variously designated bulbs—the bot¬ 
anists unfeelingly call these treasure-caskets bulbs, tubers, corms, 
or rhizomes, according to their form — one, a tiny thing not bigger 
than an ox-heart cherry, 
seems to me to occupy the 
place of honor. If you have 
ever seen a colony situated 
as it should be, you will 
surely know at once that it 
is the snowdrop; but if you 
have never seen such a 
colony — and by colony I 
mean anywhere from a 
hundred to a thousand or 
more bulbs — so situated, 
you may be forgiven for not 
realizing that it deserves to 
be so honored. For the 
snowdrop is so small and 
delicate in its ethereal beauty 
that unless it is planted 
thickly in masses one may 
very possibly overlook its 
surpassing loveliness, and fail 
to realize its merits. 
Of course every one hasn’t 
room for even snowdrop 
bulbs by the thousand, but 
if you are the possessor of a 
lawn plot even five feet 
square let me urge you to set 
at least a hundred bulbs in it. 
If it boasts a tree, group 
them around its base; this is 
precisely what they like — 
and if it is an evergreen let 
your heart rejoice, for the 
pure, modest little blossoms 
gain in airy charm by con¬ 
trast with the dusky green 
and its deep shadows. 
Tulips will thrive among weeds and grasses 
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