In planting bulbs see that they rest on a layer of silver sand 
with a handful or so over them before being covered 
Bulbs for the 
Herbaceous Border 
THE BEST WAY TO PLANT THE SPRING 
BLOOMING BULBS SO AS TO MAKE INCON¬ 
SPICUOUS THE DEPRESSING APPEARANCE 
OF THEIR UNATTRACTIVE DYING FOLIAGE 
Photographs by Nathan R. Graves and others 
T 
HE place which bulb¬ 
ous plants should 
fill in the perfect garden— 
if, indeed, the perfect gar¬ 
den is not an unattainable 
ideal — is a problem to be 
solved only by patient con¬ 
sideration and constant ex¬ 
perimenting. It is not enough that bulbs shall occupy the situa¬ 
tion casually assigned them; rather, as with all garden planting, 
the spot chosen 
pure and simple 
Tulips along the garden path. 
Effective now, but when the 
flowers have gone the foliage 
is anything but attractive 
must be the inevitable one. A bulb garden, 
to my way of thinking, is fhe fittest manner 
of preventing the beauty of 
bv the untidiness that Tune 
April and May from being marred 
will bring. A space enclosed and 
critical visitors should be 
would be my method of 
rigidly 
ex- 
the 
eternally 
avoiding 
padlocked, from which 
eluded after June first, 
despair which ripening foliage and withering stalks 
awaken, as I pass my bulb beds on the way to the roses and irises. 
To be sure, where the ubiquitous square or oval bed is cut 
out in the lawn, the scarlet tulips may be removed as soon as 
the flowers have faded, and summer-blooming plants be set out 
in their place; or where double daffodils have edged a walk, 
geraniums may be carefully planted among the bulbs. Yet this 
is merely dodging the issue. When the cultural requirements of 
the bulbs are disregarded in such a fashion, it is useless to ex¬ 
pect them to give satisfactory results another season. This ob¬ 
jection holds even more forcibly, if, in not only one or two beds 
but throughout the garden, choice and therefore expensive bulbs 
are used. Besides, the labor involved in providing and planting 
the bedding annuals is not to be forgotten, while there must be 
a considerable period of time before the latter are well estab¬ 
lished and begin to bloom. 
It is in the herbaceous border that the best opportunity for 
the use of spring-flowering bulbs would appear to be. Here the 
garden boasts of plants that give a succession of bloom from 
May through October. If such a border is rightly planned, it is 
The too common practice of bed¬ 
ding bulbs. They are replaced 
by other bedding plants, neces¬ 
sitating their premature lifting 
not hard to find room, as 
well as a congenial situation, 
for any of the bulbs whose 
ripening or disappearing fo¬ 
liage makes them an eye¬ 
sore during the summer 
months. Nor is there need 
for the space they take up 
to present a strip of uncovered earth, since at planting time, 
either in spring or autumn, this possibility may be anticipated 
and avoided by the use of hardy plants which will cover the 
ground and give blossom as well. 
Every border should be deeply spaded and thoroughly 
worked, and will be all the better for as much enrichment as 
can be given. It must be remembered, however, that it is fatal 
to hulhs to have any stable manures in contact with the roots. 
Whenever used, it should he dug far under them; and if this 
cannot be done, it is wiser to avoid manures entirely where bulbs 
are to lie, and to use bone meal instead. 
As to the size of the breadths of bulbs, the numbers of each 
clump will be dependent, of course, upon the character of the 
other plantings and upon the dimensions of the border. A very 
narrow border, only two or three feet wide, unless it be one 
that edges a true shrub border, is too likely to give the im¬ 
pression of a mere ribbon of color, and not of the sweeping- 
breadths of color that a more extended planting will afford. 
In a border of moderate width, five or six feet, more can be 
done to make the bulb planting effective. With so little distance 
to tone down the height of very tall plants, these latter should 
be kept out of the border, and here the bulbs might well be 
allowed to work into the background to some extent. However, 
the setting of a background will be lacking, and there will be 
less chance for separating the bulbous plants sufficiently to give 
room for the cover-plants among which they will be put. 
The most suitable border to treat in this manner would be 
preeminently one of greater width. With a space of from ten 
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