HTULIP-TIME is as distinctive and characteristic a season in the garden as rose-time, daffodil-time, or that short season 
when the burnished hues of the chrysanthemums warn us that the show is nearly over for the year. Tulips are, indeed, 
the crown of the May garden. Lilacs of many hues may wave their perfumed plumes, the sweet viburnum scent the 
air, dogwoods, apples, crabapples, flowering almond and spiraea may line their dark branches with lovely bloom, and a 
thousand flowers blow in the borders, but in some manner, like royalty, perhaps, the tulip holds itself apart and is easily 
supreme. 
And the amazing thing is that the flower is so simple in form, a simple cup or vase; it makes no bid for admiration 
by means of intricacies or complexities; it artlessly offers its exquisitely molded chalice on a straight sturdy stem, and all 
else around it appear fussy and confused. The carven cups of the tulips easily dominate all else of their season. A garden 
full of tulips is a garden endowed with indubitable distinction. 
But despite their simplicity their variety is astonishing. Hybridists make new flowers as Paris creates new fashions. 
The flower couturiers have been wise. They have left the lovely form alone and spent their genius upon varying its 
vesture. And what a marvellous piece of work they have done! A modem tulip list puts to shame a painter’s palette. 
Cast your eye over it and you will find no tint or tone missing save the true blues. Every color, hue, dye, cast, com¬ 
plexion, shade, chromatism is there. Amidst such wealth we do not even think of blue. But there are lilacs from palest 
mauve to deep royal purple; there are pinks that simply beggar the language and the color charts; there are reds and 
scarlets, maroons that reach towards black, and a full and flawless scale of yellows from cream to hottest orange. And 
besides we have those strange unflowerlike hues that are so valuable for house decoration—the fawns, the citrons, tawny 
fuscous, biscuit, chocolate, beige, russet and hazel. And a vast number of chaste white varieties, occasionally with an 
intriguing selvage of scarlet or yellow, sometimes pure and unsullied, with even the anthers white. The soul of a tulip is 
indeed its clothes. But many have, besides, a delicate and purely characteristic fragrance, and these will be sought out 
by persons who love sweet-scented flowers. 
There are a thousand ways to make use of tulips. They may be used in beds, marching in straight array, with a 
floor of some contrasting or harmonizing flower. For this purpose pansies in their great variety may be used, or English 
daisies, wallflowers, Anchusa myosotidiflora, bleeding heart, double-flowered arabis, golden alyssum, particularly the 
variety citrinus, Violas of all sorts and tints, myosotis, aubrieta, Armeria maritima, primroses and polyanthus, and many 
another small thing. 
Or they may be used scattered in generous groups about the borders with other flowers of their season, or brought 
within the same vision scope with some of the flowering shrubs and trees. Let us suggest that rather new shrub Kolkwitzia 
amabilis as a companion for some of the off-toned Breeders, the biscuits and fawns and dull browns, that are sometimes 
difficult to deal with in the garden. Then if you have a Iow-boughed apple tree make a plantation of tulips near it, 
preferably in the pink tones; or the mauve and purple kinds are lovely and subtle beneath a judas tree (Cercis canaden¬ 
sis). Lilacs offer a whole scale from palest pink and white to darkest and richest purple which will harmonize with 
innumerable tulip tones—yellows, whites, pinks, all the mauves and purples, even the scarlets. And besides there are the 
pink and white dogwoods, reaching down their boughs to take part in the lovely tulip assemblages. Any one with an 
eye that is an eye at all cannot go far wrong in this season of luxuriant beauty, but one with a lively sense for color 
will revel in the innumerable opportunities to paint pictures against the expectant earth. 
There is hardly a spot in the garden that will not be improved by the use of these flowers that combine glad and 
glorious colors with a simplicity of foqn and a dignity of carriage that are not rivalled by any other bloom. And they 
come at a season when we are ready and thirsty for such prodigal loveliness. 
Let us be thankful for them. 
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