MAGNOLIA CONSPICUA.
It is always a little difficult to find suitable places for the early bulbs. Many of them can be enjoyed in rough and grassy places, but we also want to combine them into pretty living pictures in the garden proper.
Nothing seems to me more unsatisfactory than the usual way of having them scattered about in small patches in the edges of flower-borders, where they only show as little disconnected dabs of colour, and where they are necessarily in danger of disturbance and probable injury when their foliage has died down and their places are wanted for summer flowers.
It was a puzzle for many years to know how to treat these early bulbs, but at last a plan was devised that seems so satisfactory that I have no hesitation in advising it for general adoption.
On the further side of a path that bounds my June garden is a border about seventy feet long and ten feet wide. At every ten feet along the back is a larch post planted with a free-growing Rose. These are not only to clothe their posts but are to grow into garlands swinging on slack chains from post to post. Beyond are Bamboos, and then an old hedge-bank with Scotch Firs, Oaks, Thorns, &c. The border slopes upwards from the path, forming a bank of gentle ascent. It was first planted with hardy Ferns in bold drifts; Male Fern for the most part, because it is not only handsome but extremely persistent; the fronds remaining green into the winter. The Fern-spaces are shown in the plan by diagonal hatching; between them come the bulbs, with a general edging to the front of mossy Saxifrage.
The colour-scheme begins with the pink of Megasea ligulata, and with the lower-toned pinks of Fumaria bulbosa and the Dog-tooth Violets (Erythronium). At the back of these are Lent Hellebores of dull red colouring, agreeing charmingly with the colour of the bulbs. A few white Lent Hellebores are at the end; they have turned to greenish white by the time the rather late Scilla amœna is in bloom. Then comes a brilliant patch of pure blue with white—Scilla sibirica and white Hyacinths, followed by the also pure blues of Scilla bifolia and Chionodoxa and the later, more purple-blue of Grape Hyacinth. A long drift of white Crocus comes next, in beauty in the border's earliest days; and later, the blue-white of Puschkinia; then again pure blue and white of Chionodoxa and white Hyacinth.
Now the colours change to white and yellow and golden foliage, with the pretty little pale trumpet Daffodil Consul Crawford, and beyond it the stronger yellow of two other small early kinds—N. nanus and the charming little N. minor, quite distinct though so often confounded with nanus in gardens. With these, and in other strips and patches towards the end of the border, are plantings of the Golden Valerian, so useful for its bright yellow foliage quite early in the year. The leaves of the Orange Day-lily are also of a pale yellowish green colour when they first come up, and are used at the end of the border. These plants of golden and pale foliage are also placed in a further region beyond the plan, and show to great advantage as the eye enfilades the border and reaches the more distant places. Before the end of the bulb-border is reached there is once more a drift of harmonised faint pink colouring of Megasea and the little Fumaria (also known as Corydalis bulbosa) with the pale early Pyrenean Daffodil, N. pallidus præcox.
The bulb-flowers are not all in bloom exactly at the same time, but there is enough of the colour intended to give the right effect in each grouping. Standing at the end, just beyond the Dog-tooth Violets, the arrangement and progression of colour is pleasant and interesting, and in some portions vivid; the pure blues in the middle spaces being much enhanced by the yellow flowers and golden foliage that follow.
Through April and May the leaves of the bulbs are growing tall, and their seed-pods are carefully removed to prevent exhaustion. By the end of May the Ferns are throwing up their leafy crooks; by June the feathery fronds are displayed in all their tender freshness; they spread over the whole bank, and we forget that there are any bulbs between. By the time the June garden, whose western boundary it forms, has come into fullest bloom it has become a completely furnished bank of Fern-beauty.